Environment Committee on March 31st, 2022

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Levin, as we know, Canada provides 14 and a half times more assistance to the oil sector than to the renewable energy sector, yet it's the renewable energy sector that we need to get going as quickly as possible.

What regulatory or policy tools do you think are required to properly establish investments? Should we bring Export Development Canada into line?

I would also like you to tell me about green finance as a way forward and about opportunities for investors.

[Julia Levin]

The EDC has a tremendous role to play in helping emerging Canadian companies take advantage of opportunities in both Canada and internationally. It's an export credit agency, but its mandate has been really reformed to focus at the domestic level, so there is a tremendous opportunity at the EDC.

There are others. I would love to see tax credits made specifically for renewable energies. The government has made important promises, like the clean electricity standard. We have to make sure that it's robust enough, so that natural gas can't squeak in, because that would be a giant missed opportunity.

There is a lot on the table in terms of growing our renewable energy sector. We need more ambition. We need to move more quickly, and we have to make sure that the funds are there.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

Let's go back and imagine for a few seconds that the government had invested 14 and a half times more money in the renewable energy economy over the past 30 years than it did in the oil economy.

What impact would this have today, especially on health care?

[Julia Levin]

It would certainly be better, without a doubt, and I have to speculate on the impacts, but I imagine better jobs. We know that investments in renewable energy are just much better in terms of the job creation potential. There is cleaner air, and communities are further along, having more control over their own energy sources. There are really countless benefits.

If we had taken an opportunity 20 years ago...We have to start today. This is still a reality that we can get to if we work hard.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have 15 seconds left, Mrs. Vignola.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Could you tell me quickly how much pollution costs annually in health care, especially for lung and heart disease?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Do you have a round number to give us on that, Ms. Levin?

[Julia Levin]

I have a number that was put forward by the Canadian Medical Health Association five years ago, and it was $53 billion each year—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Great.

[Julia Levin]

—in health costs, because of burning fossil fuels.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Collins, you have the floor.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again to Ms. Levin, Canada's biggest emitters are paying the lowest carbon tax rate, contributing only one-fourteenth of the full carbon price. Oil and gas companies are currently making record profits.

Shouldn't these companies be paying the price of their own pollution?

[Julia Levin]

One thing we had in our report was a case study of Suncor to quantify the level of subsidy through exemptions and carbon pricing. Suncor should have paid $880 million in 2020, based on the amount of carbon pollution it had. It only paid $59 million. That's a $770 million subsidy for one company. That doesn't even count its downstream pollution.

What we really need to be doing is urgently fixing the carbon pricing regime, so that it actually applies to all of the emissions from the oil and gas sector. What we don't need is a CCUS investment tax credit. We need a carbon pricing system that works.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Clearly, these carbon tax loopholes are a fossil fuel subsidy.

[Julia Levin]

Yes, they are. It's just that no one has been able to quantify them, because it's a really onerous tax. We leaned on the work of CICC to get some of our numbers, but it's an enormous fossil fuel subsidy. It's a tax break.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I'm assuming you would, but would you support legislation with a formal and binding commitment not to introduce any new fossil fuel subsidies? Are there other paths forward that you see?

[Julia Levin]

We are calling for exactly that, a binding commitment, since we're 13 years in, and we've seen very little action on this.

We also need those green streams.

In addition, we haven't talked about cancelling TMX. That's one of the most egregious examples of fossil fuel subsidies that I've seen in Canada.

A binding commitment is certainly what we're calling for.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Why are the subsidies for the decarbonization of fossil fuel production both environmentally and economically dangerous?

[Julia Levin]

When they go to oil and gas companies.... There's this notion—Minister Wilkinson has said this a lot—that, if you're paying an oil and gas company to decrease their emissions, it's not a fossil fuel subsidy. It's confusing to me. That is lowering the cost of business. It's leaving them with more profits. We see what they do with those profits; they give them to shareholders and to CEOs in bonuses. There's this false dichotomy that you can pay a company for this and not that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Carrie, you have five minutes, please.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today.

I come from Oshawa. In Oshawa we have quite an auto industry history. We have had some challenges recently, but General Motors has invested again in our community. Part of that has historically been assistance from the government.

Ms. Levin, how do the subsidies in the oil and gas sector compare to subsidies and support in other sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and things like that? Canada does tend to have certain advantages because of our resource sector and our people, and we tend to support those sectors.

How would you say these subsidies compare to support in other sectors?

[Julia Levin]

The oil and gas sector is the most subsidized sector. I can't compare it to fertilizer and manufacturing because no one has done the work of documenting those subsidies. That speaks to a lack of transparency. We do the work of documenting fossil fuel subsidies as an NGO, but the government doesn't do it, and they don't do it for any other sectors, so it's very hard to make those comparisons.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

That's interesting for our world role and our place in the world. I know that, with the automotive sector, one of the reasons the government has different tools in its tool box is to allow us to be competitive internationally. Sometimes, because of different policy reasons, it may be very expensive to do business in Canada versus other parts of the world. When we're looking at one of our natural advantages such as fossil fuels, Canada could be providing the world with the cleaner—relatively speaking—sources of energy that we are going to be needing into the future.

We may not be able to do it competitively if we don't have these different tools in the tool box. If we give up these subsidies and other countries don't, how do you think that's going to affect the overall greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels around the world? How will they be affected if Canada destroys our own industry but other countries decide not to do that in the same way?

[Julia Levin]

I'm banking on countries taking climate change seriously. Canada is a laggard; we're not a leader on this. More generally, Canada has the dirtiest oil in the world—the fourth dirtiest in the world. This came through in the ERP, this idea that we could have the cleanest and most competitive oil, but that doesn't play out in reality.

The technologies that exist to lower emissions exist everywhere. There's this magical thinking that only Canada will be able to slightly clean up our oil. That just doesn't bear out in reality. We know that our oil, because it is among the dirtiest and the most expensive, is the first that will get left behind in the energy transition.

The question is: Do we bury our head in the sand and pretend it isn't happening, or do we take care of the communities and the workers who are dependent on the sector today and make sure that, when the sector collapses, they aren't left behind? Will we repeat what we did with cod, or will we learn from that?

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I don't think burying our heads in the sand in any way is what any politicians around this table want to do, but we do want to make sure that Canadians are able to put food on the table and that we're not cutting off our own future when other countries like China, India, Brazil and some of these other countries may not be going that same route.

I want to ask a question, because Mr. Buffalo was very enlightening when he said that some of these things that are being called subsidies are actually programs that benefit different communities, particularly his community. Sadly, there doesn't appear to have been proper consultation with indigenous communities in regard to listing these different subsidies.

I'm wondering, Ms. Levin, if you could comment on that. Do you think that's the right approach to be taking?