Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for inviting me to take part in your meeting today.
My name is Dale Marshall. I am national program manager for Environmental Defence, but I am here representing Climate Action Network Canada, as their vice-chair of the board.
I'd like to make three points in support of the greenhouse gas pollution pricing act. The first is that a polluter pays system is an important tool in the fight against climate change. Secondly, Canadians can afford to put ambitious and far-reaching climate policies into place, including a price on carbon. Third, Canadians can't afford to leave any tools in the tool box, when it comes to this massive risk and given the urgency of the issue.
First, a polluter pays system is an important tool in reducing emissions, giving incentives for businesses and individuals to move towards clean energy and to move towards greater energy efficiency. It's been used in many places for many years. That's why seven of the 10 largest economies in the world have some form of a price on carbon. China has often been used as the bogeyman of climate change. At the state level, they have had a cap-and-trade system for many years and now they're implementing a national cap-and-trade system.
Design matters, though. The concessions that this bill gives to industry, in terms of its output-based pricing system, could make it less effective. In the past, when carbon pricing systems have failed to be as effective as possible, it is because of larger than necessary concessions to industry. What worries me is that Canada is doing the same thing here. There is a small portion of the Canadian economy that does face competitiveness concerns when you put into place a price on carbon, yet this bill gives blanket concessions and blanket exemptions to the industrial sector and that could be its undoing, quite frankly.
Second, the Canadian economy can afford to have a price on carbon across Canada. Four provinces already have it. The fact that those four provinces are leading the country, in terms of economic growth, does not mean that carbon pricing provokes economic growth, but it certainly shows that you can have both a strong robust economy and a price on carbon.
Scandinavian countries were the first to put these kinds of carbon pricing systems into place and generally, they have led the industrialized world, in terms of economic growth. The modelling shows that the difference you can have between doing absolutely nothing on climate change and having ambitious, robust climate policies is incredibly small and incredibly manageable. Environmental Defence and some of our partners published recent research from leading Canadian economists, which showed that the difference between reaching our Paris commitments by 2030 and doing nothing on climate change would be the difference between 38% growth in our GDP and 39% growth in our GDP between now and 2030.
Third, Canadians need to use every single policy tool that we have in order to fight climate change. Canada's 2030 target has been deemed to be highly insufficient to avoid dangerous levels of climate change and yet we're not on track to reach it. Therefore, proposed policies in the pan-Canadian framework on clean growth and climate change are incredibly important and they should be implemented with the greatest urgency and rigour. That includes carbon pricing across Canada. Leaving it off the table just leaves us further from doing the bare minimum to fight the biggest threat that we face.
Over the last decade, maybe even a generation, the history of Canada has been that we have increasingly understood the perils of climate change, yet we've done nothing about it. I certainly hope that the next decade isn't written by those who will favour polluters over the public good.
Thank you very much.