These impacts have been extremely well reported and articulated in a number of reports that the IPCC has put out over the years. In Canada, there's virtually no ecosystem that has not already been affected by climate change over the past decades. I'm not going to give you a big lecture, but I will just quickly tell you a few points.
Our northern ecosystems are the ecosystems that are most rapidly changing because the effects of warming on those systems are most extreme, acute effects, so our peatlands.... We've seen the melting of permafrost. Our boreal forests are also seeing and increased frequency and intensity of insect outbreaks, which are often exacerbated by stressors related to climate change. Our aquatic systems are seeing stresses in terms of productivity and water quality. Yes, the list can go on and on. Essentially, we're losing species. We're losing productivity. We are losing carbon sinks that many of these ecosystems provide, which, of course, comes into this equation.
One of the arguments that I would have made in my comments is that it's really, really important to consider the changes that we're already seeing, the effects that we're already seeing, in terms of the urgency, but we're there now. We're there now. We have an act, so that's good, but it will be really important in the development of the plans to ensure that we continue to conserve and restore [Technical difficulty—Editor] degradation of those ecosystems, the least of which is because they contribute to carbon sinks. However, of course, they provide a lot of other ecosystem services to humanity.