Mr. Chair, thank you.
I'd like to thank all the officials for coming here and giving us a technical analysis of these provisions. As has been said, this is complex stuff, but under all the complexity there are some underlying mechanisms, principles. I don't think the Canadian public wants to get into the minutiae, but they do want to know that we know what we're doing. That's what I want to get at.
Before I ask some specific questions on the provisions, I'd like to ask some broad-stroke questions and get some context to deal with three main points: that climate change is real and it's out there; that the way to deal with it is to put a price on pollution; and that the goal, as has been discussed, is to change behaviour in order to transition from a carbon economy to a different kind of economy, which is greener but which also maintains economic activity and growth.
Having said that, what are the underlying principles and values to the two mechanisms that I'd like to deal with? That is, the federal backstop, the changes to the Income Tax Act, and then the changes to the goods and services tax. The second one is how it will not impact economic activity through small business activity.