Thank you, and thanks to all of you for holding this hearing and inviting me to present today.
On the cost of inaction, I want to actually start not with the trillions of dollars of costs because of wildfires, flooding, drought, etc. Living here in B.C. we've seen the costs of that, and it includes lives as well. In that heat dome in British Columbia, over 600 people perished during that event, and that was just one event. We've had billions of dollars of destruction through wildfires and homes destroyed, etc.
On the cost to citizens, one is the cost of insurance. That's a real cost that we've seen. I don't have the stats on hand, but perhaps somebody does, and I can follow up with the committee about just what we are seeing already in terms of the household costs.
I would say more importantly the costs of inaction are putting Canada's economy at risk. The world is, as I've identified, moving to a lower-carbon economy in which people are both continuing with climate policies and putting in place border carbon adjustments. There will be costs to Canadian goods if we are not following through on that, and secondly, there are the costs of what the world will be buying. I mentioned that South Korea, which is one of the places we're identifying as a target for our LNG exports, may well be purchasing LNG, but they are also developing their clean energy and clean technology sector.
A decade ago, when we started these conversations, it was really ideas around where we thought things would go. Now the costs have dropped—hear me—90%, and then 90% again, not just for things like solar and wind but also for battery technology, storage technology. That helps address the intermittency of renewables and actually creates grid stability.
What we risk is our economic future.