Thank you. I certainly agree. When our government took office, as I said, five years ago, Canada's emissions were going very much the wrong way, and they would have been 12% higher by 2030 versus 2005.
Both the international Paris Agreement and the Canadian net-zero emissions accountability act recognize the importance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global human-caused C02 emissions must reach net zero around 2050 to achieve 1.5°C.
Canadians are already experiencing the significant impacts of a changing climate. Canada is actually changing at twice the average rate around the world, and in the north, it's three times. There are enormous impacts of that. The Bank of Canada found that climate change could cost the economy between $21 billion to $43 billion a year by 2050 if no action is taken. The Insurance Bureau of Canada has put out its own set of figures, and we've all seen some of the extreme weather events around Fort McMurray and in B.C. with respect to forest fires. This is real. It is happening. It's a science issue. It's not a debate; it's a science issue. These effects are expected to intensify in the future.
Already, there's a lot of global momentum, and 120 countries have adopted this science-based target. Canada has an opportunity to address the potential impacts of climate change to ensure that we're moving towards an economy that will provide the products and services that people in a low-carbon world are going to want, and to ensure that we can actually have a prosperous economy that will sustain and grow good middle-class jobs. That's the focus of this bill.
