Mr. Chairman, honourable members, thank you for inviting the Green Budget Coalition to speak to you today.
I am joined today by Sachi Gibson from the Pembina Institute, who can take questions as well.
The Green Budget Coalition is unique in bringing together the expertise of 20 of Canada's leading environmental and conservation organizations. We collectively represent over 600,000 Canadians, including groups like Pembina, the David Suzuki Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, Nature Canada, and the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
We want to again thank the government for its progress in budget 2011: funding for home energy retrofits, for Mealy Mountains National Park, the Great Lakes, renewing funding for the clean air agenda and the chemicals management plan, and also for ending counterproductive subsidies to fossil fuels, the oil sands, and the Chrysotile Institute. Those were well noted.
To build on this progress in budget 2012, we've identified four prime investment and savings opportunities. I'll note that my presentation is a slight revision of what was in the original submission to you, but it's reflected in the preliminary recommendations document that we sent to you on September 29 and again yesterday.
Our recommendations address species at risk, freshwater resources, energy efficiency, and fossil fuel subsidies. I suspect I'm unique, in that our package of recommendations will not only create environmental and economic benefits, but will also save the government over $300 million annually.
On species at risk, one-quarter of the current funding for the species at risk program is sunsetting in March 2012. We, along with many industry and agricultural organizations, recommend renewing this $25 million, which was previously renewed in 2007. It's a relatively small amount of money that plays an important role in protecting Canada's at-risk species, a task Canada has committed to through international agreements and that maintains our responsibilities relative to international trade.
Second, fresh water is central to the health of Canadians, our communities, our economies, and our environments. Yet Canada's record in protecting Canada's freshwater resources and ecosystems lags behind other leading nations.
We're highlighting three opportunities to make progress on water: upgrading the terrible state of water and waste water infrastructure systems in first nations, Inuit, and Métis communities; addressing the gaps in monitoring Canada's water quality and quantity that were identified by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development in his fall 2010 report; and securing the health of three of Canada's diverse aquatic ecosystems in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence, Lake Winnipeg, and the Northwest Territories.
Thirdly, energy efficiency is the cleanest, most affordable, and fastest way to make more energy available to our economy while reducing pollution and reducing energy costs for businesses and individual Canadians across Canada. It's also an important source of sustainable employment. In budget 2012 it's time to again make a multi-year commitment to home retrofits focused on lower-income households to provide continuity and certainty to Canadians and this blossoming industry. We recommend a lower level of $250 million per year for a national green homes strategy, along with a smaller investment to kick-start the green bonds program.
Fourthly, reducing fossil fuel subsidies provides a prime opportunity to simultaneously reduce the federal deficit, to build on the momentum this government has created in budgets 2007 and 2011, and to make further progress in fulfilling our commitment to the G-20 to phase out inefficient subsidies to fossil fuels over the medium term, which total over $2 billion annually.
The best next steps on this path are to end tax preferences through the Canadian exploration expense and the Canadian development expense. These were noted as subsidies for potential reform by the Deputy Minister of Finance in his March 2010 memorandum to Finance Minister Flaherty. Bringing the deductible rates under the CEE and the CDE in line with normal capital depreciation rates would save the government over $1.3 billion annually in unnecessary tax expenditures.
In conclusion, I'd like to urge you all to keep in mind the finance minister's words from September 14, that economic prosperity can't and shouldn't be separated from the health of the environment.