Thank you, honourable Chair. Committee members, thank you for inviting the Green Budget Coalition to present before you today. You should have before you our comprehensive recommendations for budget 2016.
The Green Budget Coalition represents 16 national environmental organizations. We've been operating since 1999. We make an annual submission to the federal government to ensure that the federal government has the resources to address the most pressing issues regarding environmental sustainability in Canada.
This year the focus of our budget 2016 recommendations is to ensure that the federal departments and their respective ministers have the resources not only to deliver the commitments and the mandate letters of the new government but also to deliver on some ongoing statutory obligations and international commitments.
I will take you very briefly through our detailed recommendations.
With regard to clean energy and climate change leadership, we make a series of recommendations for strategic federal investment in advancing the generation of renewable energy in Canada. This includes modernizing the electrical distribution grid and providing some fiscal incentives for electricity storage technologies, which are absolutely critical to ensure Canada meets its full renewable energy generation potential.
Complementary to renewable energy, we make a series of recommendations on energy efficiency and to encourage energy conservation in Canadian homes and businesses. This includes a national home energy retrofit plan with a grant program that low-income families would be able to access to retrofit their homes.
We make a recommendation to begin a complete phase-out of all the tax preferences to the fossil fuel industry sector. As you know, this is a commitment that Canada made to the G20, and it is in the current mandate letter of the Minister of Finance. We want to see a complete phase-out of the tax preferences to the fossil fuel sectors over the next five years.
Complementary to that, we would like to see a review of the public financing portfolio of Export Development Canada, as Export Development Canada continues to provide public financing to the oil and gas sectors for explorations overseas.
We have a recommendation to develop a national carbon pricing standard to ensure that we reach a common, coordinated carbon price across Canada of at least $50 per tonne of CO2 by 2020.
We make a very comprehensive series of recommendations to protect our changing Arctic from the impacts of climate change. That includes ensuring the safety of marine transportation, building climate-resilient infrastructure, and bringing renewable energy and energy efficiency projects to Canada's north.
With regard to infrastructure spending, this is about to be a very large investment of this government. We want to ensure that any federal funding for infrastructure meets some strict criteria to ensure that it meets core policy objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sequester carbon, and enhance the resiliency of our communities against climate change.
We recommend a minimum investment of $2 billion per year for public transit in Canada. We make a series of recommendations to bring green infrastructure into first nations communities as well as to ensure clean drinking water across first nations communities.
With regard to Canada's international conservation commitments, the Government of Canada has made commitments under the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity to protect 17% of our land and inland waters by 2020. This requires investment in areas of strict federal jurisdiction, including species at risk protection, creating new national parks, creating national wildlife areas, and protecting migratory birds.
The Government of Canada, under the same convention, also committed to protecting 10% of our oceans by 2020. This will require significant federal investment to create new marine protected areas and to improve ocean science and monitoring.
Finally, it is critical that private landowners be engaged and be supported and compensated for their stewardship initiatives, and that they contribute to meeting our international conservation commitments.
We make a recommendation to engage Canadians in nature to ensure Canadians have the opportunity to experience the outdoors and to create employment opportunities for youth in the environmental sector.
With regard to protecting Canada's fresh water, we recommend the creation of a Canada water fund to ensure that the Canadian clean technology sector implements best practices in waste water treatment technologies and water quality monitoring.
We also have some international commitments with regard to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Significant new federal funding will be required in order to deliver on those commitments.
Our final series of recommendations is related to a healthy environment and healthy Canadians. We want to ensure that we address inequity in environmental risk exposure within the Canadian population. We would like to see a new tax credit being provided so that Canadians can remediate the impacts of radon in their homes.
This is a very brief overview of our comprehensive submissions for this year.
Thank you very much.