Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate that the government has decided to offer any clarity. When this motion was first tabled, I was very skeptical that they would want it to be a very long study to run out the clock of this committee's important work, and it turns out that seven is just how long they want to run out the clock for on the important work of this committee. I think that is exceedingly long, given that the government has indicated in the budget that they plan to strengthen it, with no indication as to what that looks like, while also simultaneously paring back other marquee Liberal-era policies regarding the environment.
I have very little faith that the work of this committee is going into the development of an actual policy of what “strengthening” looks like, and I'd be very curious whether the Liberal members might have some insight as to when their “might be” announced changes come because, realistically, we will not start this study until February.
Based on the calendar, we have four outstanding appearances from the minister, and I noticed that the minister's appearance is not even included in this. It seems odd that the government would not want their own minister to appear on such an important issue, to discuss what “strengthening” might look like. Perhaps it's because we have yet to see the minister before this committee. I know she is slated to attend some time in early December, after not one but four separate invitations to appear before this committee. Again, a glaring omission from this particular motion itself is the fact that there is no desire to have the minister come before this committee to explain what “strengthening” means in the budget.
I'm opposed to the entirety of this motion because I think it's on the government to come forward with clarity about what their own policy is, unless they give us some confidence that anything we do during a study of this would actually go towards looking at what strengthening a policy would look like. However, given the calendar as it exists and that the environment commissioner came out with reports—which the government, I'm sure, doesn't want to hear, when he comes to tell us that we are nowhere near on track to meeting our emissions reduction targets—I think that should certainly take a priority, as well as the calendar, which is already very full.
Again, this is going to start in February, when we return—maybe late January in a best-case scenario. Setting up for seven meetings will take us, with other ongoing drafting, we have numerous reports.... This is an obscenely long study for the review of a policy that, I would hope.... Given the urgency this government stated it's going to act on, in terms of both economic growth and emissions reductions, but has yet to live up to, it seems silly for us to commit ourselves to such a lengthy study so far into the future.
I do not believe that we should be giving ourselves seven meetings. Frankly, I think we should put a pause on the entirety of this to allow the government to come forward with its plans for what strengthening the industrial carbon tax actually looks like.
I'll pause there, Mr. Chair.