Thanks, and my apologies that I can't answer in French. My French is terrible.
Yes, it is the case that there are a number of examples worldwide of how countries keep track of, maintain oversight and ensure accountability for their climate commitments.
The Government of Canada has spent the last couple of months consulting on expert engagement for oversight and accountability for the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change and in fact a couple of days ago issued a request for proposals for organizations to submit ideas on how that body of experts might be formed and who might host it. If we're going to use that mechanism to keep us on track towards our Paris pledge and make sure that we finally follow through on an international climate commitment, we need to do the things I outlined at the very beginning of my address to you.
One essential element has to be the development of key indicators that help us measure progress over time and report consistently on that progress. It can't just be an exercise in which experts come together and talk about the best ways forward on sustainable transportation. They should be doing that, but they should also be asking how we performed this year in the deployment of public transportation or how we performed this year in funding active transportation.
Key indicators are really essential and the mechanism that this body has for reporting to governments at every scale is also quite critical. In a federated country such as Canada, we need to ensure that this body is delivering its recommendations and its reports to provincial and federal governments and that the federal government then has to respond. That is the process we see play out in the U.K. climate committee, which is really useful.
An added benefit of this is that it helps to remove climate action from the vagaries of election cycles. It creates a mechanism that generates a kind of consistent feedback flow among various levels of government.
Finally, Mr. Fast, if I can just pull your first comments into this, it's true that currently we are not on track to meet our Paris commitment. The surefire way to lock in missing our Paris commitment is to use that fact as a reason to delay action. The only way we're going to get to our Paris pledge is by doing everything we can right now, right away.
Everything looks impossible until it is done. We are currently making up for lost time, and it would be a key element of that expert committee to be keeping track of the progress and making sure that we're doing what we say we're going to do.