Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and distinguished members of the committee.
My name is Marc-André Viau, and I am the director of government relations at Équiterre. I will be sharing my time with my colleague, Émile Boisseau-Bouvier, who is our climate policy analyst.
First, I would like to say a few words about our organization. We have been in existence for more than 25 years, and we have more than 150,000 members and supporters. We have expertise in climate and energy policy, mobility and food and consumption systems at both the Quebec and federal levels.
Together with the Quebec Environmental Law Centre, from which you'll be hearing when the next panel of witnesses takes our place, we recently defended, before the Supreme Court, the position that the federal government has jurisdiction over the carbon pricing system in a manner consistent with the jurisdiction of the provinces.
We thank you for this opportunity to discuss Bill C-12. I will begin with a brief reminder. The first climate accountability bill was introduced nearly 15 years ago. For all kinds of wrong reasons, the bill that the House of Commons passed at the time, Bill C-311, didn't receive royal assent in 2010. Consequently, one might say we've already missed the first milestone set forth in that bill, which was a 25% reduction in greenhouse gases from 1990 levels by 2020.
I hope we don't miss our rendezvous—