Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for joining us, Mr. Commissioner and officials. We really appreciate it.
Repeatedly on this committee, it has been suggested that the United States is lowering its emissions in the absence of any carbon pricing mechanisms, although 12 states—home to over a quarter of the U.S. population and accounting for a third of U.S. GDP—have active carbon pricing programs that are successfully reducing emissions. Those states include California, which has a GDP almost twice the size of Canada's; Washington state; and then 11 northeast states.
Would you characterize that if they are diminishing emissions in the United States, if they—