Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, honourable members, good morning. Thank you very much for inviting us. I'm joined by my colleague Yanick Touchette.
I want to focus my brief remarks this morning on three recommendations contained in the recent report of the Green Budget Coalition, of which IISD is a member. That report is entitled “Recommendations for Budget 2019”. The three priorities I'll mention are sustainable agriculture, freshwater stewardship and subsidy reform.
Honourable members will recall that a key focus of the Barton reports centred on opportunities for Canada as a global leader in agricultural production and international trade. Those reports underscored the importance of increasing investments in agricultural innovation, productivity enhancement, and digital and open data tools. Those investments, according to the Barton reports, could help move Canada from its current ranking as the world's seventh-largest agricultural exporter to the world's second largest. We believe an important part of that ambitious agricultural innovation agenda includes sustainable agriculture.
Evidence shows that global demand for sustainable agriculture is growing. IISD colleagues track global trends in sustainable commodity production, third party sustainability certification, and trade on an ongoing basis. To illustrate, roughly one-third of the current $9-billion global palm oil market conforms to some sustainability standards. For coffee, 40% of what we consume has some kind of third party sustainability standard.
Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum and IISD examined trends and emerging opportunities in global agricultural supply chains and sustainability standards. Especially since the 2015 sustainable development goals and the Paris climate agreement, there is greater convergence of a demand-side pull from consumers wanting greater choices that embed organic, fair trade, sustainable and climate-smart values with a supply-side push from growers and distributors to include sustainability choices. Trade agreements like the WTO, Mercosur, CETA and others could and should have a bigger role in supporting this convergence through such tools as mutual recognition equivalency of different standards.
Mr. Chair, I'd be glad to share the reports I've just mentioned with members of the committee through the clerk, but in light of these trends, we encourage increased investments in federal agri-environmental programs, as well as investments in research and development in environmentally sustainable agriculture as well as ways to reduce food waste.
The second priority is freshwater stewardship. IISD is proud to run the Experimental Lakes Area, which marks its 50th anniversary in 2018. It's important that the federal government continue working with different jurisdictions and communities across Canada to address both well-known problems like non-point phosphorous, chemical and other pollution, and the emerging challenges facing lakes and rivers throughout the country associated with climate impacts changing hydrological cycles. We therefore encourage investments that anticipate and respond to climate-related effects on Canada's freshwater systems as well as investments for aquatic restoration, including working with farmers in protecting and restoring wetlands.
Finally, on subsidies, for over a decade IISD has worked to identify and eliminate subsidies that support, largely indirectly through tax treatment, fossil fuels. While the cost to implement Canada's promise at the 2009 G20 Pittsburgh summit of phasing out all of these subsidies is small, the direct and indirect savings measured in avoided greenhouse gas emissions, public health benefits, and others are substantial. We welcome the progress by successive federal governments in sunsetting several fossil fuel subsidies over the past decade. We encourage more action to reach or exceed the 2009 target of 2025 for eliminating all inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.
Transparency plays a crucial role in reforming fossil fuel subsidies, a view underscored by the Auditor General. As the government begins an international peer-review process of its fossil fuel subsidies, we look forward to better accounting transparency. Given my colleagues' work with other governments across the world involved in a subsidy peer-review process, we'd be pleased to share with the Department of Finance our experience with regard to this process.
Mr. Chair, colleagues, thank you very much.