Honourable committee members, thank you very much for inviting the Green Budget Coalition to speak to you today.
The Green Budget Coalition, as many of you would know, is a unique initiative that brings together 14 of Canada's leading environmental and conservation groups representing over 600,000 Canadians, ranging from Ducks Unlimited, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, to Nature Canada, and the crazy radicals at Greenpeace.
We exist to present an analysis of the most pressing issues regarding environmental sustainability in Canada and to make a consolidated annual set of recommendations to the federal government regarding strategic fiscal and budgetary opportunities.
Please note that we sent you a more detailed set of our recommendations back on October 8, 2013, and later this month we will send you a final set of recommendations.
We want to thank the government for its environmental progress in Budget 2013 and subsequent announcements, including reductions in subsidies to the mining industry, funding for nature conservation, the major infrastructure investments, and for committing a couple of times to enshrine the polluter-pay principle in legislation.
To build on this progress for Budget 2014 we have identified and developed three feature recommendations as well as 10 complementary recommendations.
Firstly, to build further on the government's progress in increasing tax neutrality and phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, the coalition recommends two targeted measures: enabling the Canadian exploration expense only for unsuccessful exploration, which is only about 10% of the wells that are drilled, and not renewing the mineral exploration tax credit for flowthrough shares.
These were both identified as subsidies for potential reform by the Deputy Minister of Finance in a March 2010 memorandum to the finance minister and could save the government about $340 million, helping to reduce the deficit further.
Secondly, we were pleased to see the government's throne speech recommit to implementing the national conservation plan, a unique opportunity to accelerate Canada's conservation achievements by our 150th anniversary in 2017. To be effective, Canada's national conservation plan should focus on completing the terrestrial and marine protected areas networks, ensuring sustainable management of working land and seascapes, maintaining or restoring healthy populations of species of wild plants and animals, and building a conservation ethic in Canada by better connecting Canadians with nature.
Thirdly, Canada's fresh waters are of national and regional importance and contribute extensively to the social, ecological, and economic wellbeing of our country. The Green Budget Coalition recommends the government set up a five-year Canadian water fund to build on past and current progress to address some of the gaps in these efforts by focusing on alleviating land-based runoff of pollutants and nutrients in areas specific to federal jurisdiction as well as actions specific to the Great Lakes and invasive species.
We also have further complementary recommendations in our document that were not in the brief addressing energy sustainability, climate action, and green infrastructure. I'd like to focus on three of those opportunities that relate specifically to today's theme.
Regarding energy storage and electricity storage, the coalition recommends amending classes 43.1 and 43.2 of the Income Tax Act to specify that capital cost allowances also apply to expenditures on tangible, stand-alone energy storage investments, and to create a 30% investment tax credit for emerging energy storage technologies. Both of these would help to drive renewable energy growth and help to make our energy systems more efficient across the country.
Further, to reduce diesel fuel dependency in northern and remote communities, we are recommending a strategic $10 million to $15 million fund be set up to provide feasibility staged funding in the range of half a million to $2.5 million per project—which is not easily available right now—to catalyze renewable energy, transmission interconnection, large-scale improvements in community energy demand, and major enhancements to promote enhanced home and building facility energy efficiency for off-grid communities.
These measures together would help make Canada achieve transformative progress towards environmental sustainability as well as creating numerous jobs across Canada in time for our 150th anniversary in 2017.
Thank you very much.