Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honourable committee members, for inviting the Green Budget Coalition to speak to you today. I'm joined by our chair, Barry Turner, from Ducks Unlimited Canada.
As you likely recall, the Green Budget Coalition is unique in bringing together 21 of Canada's leading environmental and conservation organizations, representing over 600,000 Canadians in groups such as Ducks Unlimited, Nature Canada, Équiterre, and the Pembina Institute.
Since 1999 we've been working cooperatively with the government to help advance strategic measures to advance long-term environmental sustainability. Our efforts were acknowledged in the 2005 federal budget.
We have identified four prime investment and savings opportunities for budget 2011, each of which is pivotal for ensuring prosperity for Canadians now and in the future. What is particularly unique about our recommendations, and which is probably different from most of what you've heard, is that one of our recommendations would help pay for most of our other three. They address a conservation plan for Canada, catalyzing energy efficiency growth, Canada's freshwater resources, and opportunities to save money by cutting environmentally harmful and counterproductive subsidies.
We're supporting the development of an ambitious, integrated conservation plan for Canada, focused on protecting Canada's remarkable ecosystems, wildlife, and wilderness heritage for future generations. This builds on the government's Speech from the Throne commitment last March to “build on the creation of more than 85,000 square kilometres of national parks and marine conservation areas as part of its national conservation plan”.
Developing such a conservation plan will require federal leadership to bring together federal, provincial, and aboriginal governments, conservation organizations, industry representatives, and individual Canadians to develop a shared vision and a common path forward. At the same time, it's important to keep funding some of Canada's current conservation programs and to provide some funding for Parks Canada to continue moving forward in creating new national parks.
Fresh water is also central to Canadians. The government is continuing to make progress on this in most of its annual budgets, which we've appreciated. We're highlighting four opportunities this year, which range from only $5 million, a one-time cost to start a national water efficiency program similar to the WaterSense program in the United States, to also protecting endangered species and a recommendation for waste water infrastructure. One of the keys there is that there are still a billion dollars in existing infrastructure funds that could be put towards upgrading water infrastructure in municipalities across Canada.
The other prime area I want to bring to your attention is a suite of counterproductive environmental tax and subsidy programs that still exist, but at best no longer justify their cost, and at worst really do damage the environment. There are four areas we're highlighting. One is tax subsidies for oil. There are four examples in our more detailed recommendations, all of which were mentioned in a memo from Deputy Minister of Finance Michael Horgan to Minister Flaherty on March 18. So we're not inventing these. These have been very prominently acknowledged as key subsidy measures. This would allow us to fulfill our commitments to the G-20 to phase out inefficient subsidies.
We'd also like to see an end to subsidies to AECL around nuclear power. If there's a deal to sell AECL, it should be done with an agreement that Canada is no longer on the hook for future liabilities.
As well, $250,000 annually continues to go to the Chrysotile Institute in Quebec to promote subsidies that are widely acknowledged as environmentally harmful to human health.
Fourthly, there are some key measures we can take to harmonize our tax treatment of primary mineral extraction with recycling, which is the way of the future.
Overall, I would just encourage the committee to ask for this in your report, and to ask the finance minister to invest in a conservation plan for Canada in energy efficiency and our freshwater resources, and to pay for most of these investments by ending outdated and counterproductive subsidies to oil, nuclear power, speculative mining exploration, and the Chrysotile Institute. These measures will help create a truly sustainable, healthy economy for Canadians today and in the future.
Thank you.