Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here. It's good to see you.
I'll pick up where my colleague Madame Pauzé left off, talking about this question of whether Canada is indeed on track. I think that we, along with several other parties at this table, want to see ambition and we want to see the necessary work being done to meet the promise that you've made to Canadians.
It's interesting. This committee heard maybe a month ago from the environment commissioner, and he told a story very different from the one you're telling today. I'll read what he said in his report.
It reads:
Environment and Climate Change Canada estimated that the measures in the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan were not expected to reduce emissions to the extent needed to meet the target.
The environment commissioner, whose work is required as part of the emissions accountability act, has found that Canada isn't on track to meet either the 2026 objective or the 2030 target, yet ECCC's progress report that came out last week had a very different conclusion. It said that everything was rosy and well on track to meet both the 2026 objective and the 2030 target.
The key criticism that the environment commissioner makes is that the projections that ECCC uses are overly optimistic.
I was looking through the progress report that includes these optimistic projections, and I noticed that for the oil and gas industry, for instance, a fairly precipitous drop in oil and gas emissions in 2023 is projected, back down to below the prepandemic levels.
My first question is this: How should Canadians understand the contrast between the message we received from the environment commissioner and what you've put out, which is much more optimistic, and do you have information that suggests the oil and gas industry is going to reduce its emissions next year, the year after and the year after that, as this modelling in your report clearly shows?