Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to be here.
I'm speaking from Ottawa, as I mentioned a little earlier, which is the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.
The Government of Canada's climate plan commits to decarbonization across all economic sectors by 2050. This includes, as you folks well know, a price on carbon pollution, strengthening existing methane regulations, clean fuels regulations, and putting a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector.
The emissions reduction fund is part of that plan and one part of the comprehensive set of tools that are going to be needed to achieve our climate objectives, to support jobs, and to grow and secure the opportunities from the net-zero economy.
The program was launched in 2020 as a COVID response measure. The program sought to ensure the continued reduction of methane emissions at a time of record low energy prices and to maintain jobs during a very difficult period. It did that. In just over its first year, $142 million was invested in 93 projects. Most involved small and medium-sized enterprises across western Canada, where they are having a positive impact on the local economies, such as Estevan, Brandon and Slave Lake. Those projects are expected to deliver 4.7 megatonnes of emissions reductions in the first 12 months after they're completed. That's equivalent to taking about one million cars off the road.
The pandemic is continuing, but at the same time we agree with the audit of the Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development that thankfully many of the economic circumstances since the program was introduced just over a year ago have changed. We're going to continue to evolve. The situation will continue to evolve.
The input of the commissioner and of stakeholders, industry and non-governmental organizations regarding the program has been fabulously welcomed and valued. In fact, since the launch of the program the department has made periodic changes throughout to improve its delivery.
The audit report helped us shape the relaunch of the program that happened on January 19. We received the audit that came out in public on November 25. In particular, I would flag three things for you.
First, we narrowed the scope to only projects that fully eliminate intentional routine methane venting and flaring. Those are the projects that will come forward in the third project intake period.
Second, we strengthened the criteria applied to focus on the greatest return on investment from an emissions perspective.
The third big thing we did was to provide greater transparency to ensure that projects demonstrate reductions that are incremental to Canada's methane reductions. These changes are going to further improve the program from its foundation, consistent with the conditions we're in today.
We're really grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you about this today. This is a program that gets into some technical issues. I'm very grateful to have the director general of the clean fuels branch, my colleague Debbie Scharf, here to speak with me.
I'll end there. We look forward to your questions.