Thank you, Mr. Chair.
For those tuning in, I would remind you that we're holding this debate as a result of a meeting we had five days ago here at the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development with the commissioner of the environment. As everyone knows, the commissioner and his team are independent people who document specific issues and take an objective look at them. They have tabled five reports for us to look at, reports that could be the subject of political debate. That's why we're in politics, by the way. We have opposing views, and that's as it should be. That's called democracy, and our forums are the House of Commons and parliamentary committees like this one.
One of the environment commissioner's reports was on the strategic innovation fund's net zero accelerator initiative to decarbonize manufacturing industries. The net zero accelerator initiative is a program that pays companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, thereby reducing pollution. This program is not small potatoes; its budget is $8 billion. For those tuning in at home, I'll point out that eight billion of their income tax dollars, not their GST dollars, will be spent on this. I want to make that clear because we learned when the budget was tabled that $54.1 billion will go to paying interest on the debt, and that happens to be exactly how much Canadians shell out in GST. Every penny Canadians pay in GST goes to paying interest on the debt. None of it is used to fund this kind of program.
Now, has the program panned out? In our opinion, the answer is no, not at all. That's why we had questions for the commissioner of the environment. His answers were damning, to say the least. I started by asking him if it was effective and efficient, and he replied, “I'm not convinced it's effective. It might be if they're lucky, but it wouldn't be thanks to any grand plan….”
If it's luck you want, go to the casino across the Ottawa River.