Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone. It's been a very informative and spirited conversation this afternoon.
I have a couple of things. I keep hearing about the economy. I know that, for the residents of my riding, the economy is the most important thing, ensuring people have a good future and a bright future for their children.
As someone who's followed the economy for over 20 years of his life—and Mr. Leach, I've read a lot of your material, along with the materials of my alma mater professor, Mark Jaccard over at Simon Fraser University—I think about where our Canadian economy is, with 85% of the provinces now operating under a pricing of carbon or some sort of mechanism. We're doing quite well, and this was affirmed last week. A.T. Kearney came out, and Canada is the number two place in the world for preference of foreign direct investments.
Mr. Kenney and I visited the beautiful province of Alberta. I am originally from the west coast. We visited the Alberta industrial heartland. Seeing the number of investment decisions that have been made in the polypropylene and propylene businesses that IPL has announced and so forth and the number of opportunities there, we know there is just phenomenal activity going on in that area of Alberta.
I covered the oil and gas sector. I'm not asking questions; I'll get there in a second.
To Mr. Leach, the question I have is this. If you look at the empirical evidence, and you look at where industry is going.... Look at Daimler in Germany, where they're switching their entire fleet of dregs or trucks, the ones you see on the Alberta highways and on the Ontario highways, to electric. They understand.... Mr. Kenney alluded to ragging the puck. I like the analogy of knowing where the puck is going and making sure you're there. That's the analogy I use.
To Mr. Leach, innovation, yes, but we need a mechanism for pricing carbon to get at the root of the issue.