Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to my colleague Madame Pauzé for putting forward this motion.
I think it's a very good idea to be doing this. We've worked on this study for quite a while now. The time frame to get our sustainable finance legislation in place was yesterday, or last year. The climate-aligned finance act is already there. We have some good legislation, and I think we need to move more quickly.
Unfortunately, we've had a number of delays in this committee over the course of this study, which have caused us to not move as quickly as we would have liked to get this study and the report completed. Some of them were necessary, like our study on the Jasper fire. I believe sending a letter to the ministers would help expedite some of the things that need to be undertaken and at least have them considered by the bodies.
With regard to OSFI, since it's in the middle of reconsidering it and it can start looking at what it should be doing to align with it, we should definitely have that recommendation there.
We've talked a lot about the climate-aligned finance act in this committee, and we need to have that science-based regulatory framework in place. Asking to have these particular recommendations in place and having the federally regulated public pension funds—the CPPIB and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board—disclose their investments, starting as soon as possible, would be very important.
I note what's happening in Alberta with its pension fund right now. There's the move toward less transparency and a very bizarre way of running a pension plan. I think the example set by the federal government in the pension plans that we regulate would be good for other pension plans across Canada.
The working group in the Competition Bureau is also an excellent idea, Madame Pauzé. We need to do what we can to combat greenwashing in the financial sector as well as we have in the real economy.
For all those reasons, I say that we should do this. I think there could be more in this letter, but given that the report will be going forward in January and we can supplement it with other recommendations, these are some of the key ones that we should put in place and put forward.
I will just thank you for this. Sustainable finance is something we have not moved on quickly enough. The taxonomy is very important. Disclosures are important, obviously. I believe that the sooner we can get these in place, the better.
We had unprecedented cross-party support for climate-aligned financial regulation in 2023, with motion 84. We already know we're all behind this. We want our financial sector to be in support of the real sector when it comes to meeting our environmental goals. The more we can do to expedite that, the better it will be.
I know our analysts will do an amazing job working on the full report that will be forthcoming. We will certainly add other recommendations to this. This is something that should be done, especially in light of the FES coming forward, if we are able to actually do some real work in the House of Commons and if the Conservatives allow us to actually move on from debating a privilege motion—which we've already agreed to, but they've changed the terms of it now—so that we can get to some of the other work we have to do, it would be helpful. In the absence of that—we don't know when the FES will be coming forward—having other things like this go directly to the environment minister is important, as is trying to get some of this work started.
Bill S-243, which Senator Galvez put forward, has a lot of good material in it. Referencing that and trying to move forward on some of those issues is also important.
We have a climate emergency. Canadians across the country are concerned about the level of pollution that is continuing with the level of investment that is being made by our financial institutions and our pensions in the oil and gas sector for new production. They're not investments that would actually reduce emissions, as they like to say they want to do; they're for new production, which actually increases emissions.
The oil and gas sector in Canada right now is contributing, I think, less than 6% to our GDP. A lot of our oil and gas industry is foreign-owned and is contributing over 31% to greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. It's the only sector that has not contributed to the decrease we've seen in our emissions over the last while.
The sooner we can get the financial sector online, the sooner we will understand, along with the public, whether these investments are helping us meet our climate goals, are transitioning us to our environment goals, or are doing nothing or hurting us when it comes to our climate goals. I think all Canadians should have that information; certainly, when I look at investments or I look at companies, that is something I think about. I know many of my constituents in Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill also look at that information and have found it difficult in the past to ascertain, in fact, where the investments are being made and whether a fund that says it's green is actually green.
This is an excellent motion you've put forward. Thank you for doing the work on this; I will certainly be supporting it.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.