Certainly in our engagement with Environment and Climate Change Canada, our main issue was around the feasibility of the target and the stringency of the reduction that would be imposed on our sector. Our view was in keeping with the principle of a challenging but feasible target, one that would be challenging for the industry but would also mitigate much of the inequity that the patchwork consists of today. This would have been achieved by using a target of 90% of the sector average. We provided a considerable amount of economic analysis around that.
You may recall that when the policy was announced, it was a blanket requirement of 70% of sector targets. This followed the initial round of analysis of phase one and phase two within the government. That was reduced to 80% across the board, with a number of sectors that were particularly energy intensive and trade exposed at 90%. Phase three analysis on many sectors did a considerable degree of work. It was certainly our perspective that we had provided a very compelling case with respect to the challenges that our sector faced, and that 90% would be more appropriate. That was not the decision. In our case, that certainly addresses the principle of challenging but feasible targets. It results in a higher degree of equity. It also resolves many of the issues around the imbalance between environmental and economic performance and the risk of carbon leakage that exists under the current system.