Thank you for the opportunity to present here today.
My name is Dale Marshall, and I'm the national climate program manager for environmental defence.
Advocates of environmental protection are often told that the cupboard is bare when it comes to budgets, investing, protecting the environment and fighting climate change. Yet every major study of climate change shows that the cost of inaction is much greater than the cost of action. We can see that with the floods here in Ottawa, in the Maritimes; the forest fires that have ravaged the west. It feels as if every year extreme weather events are hitting Canada. Those are the costs borne by the people; they are important.
The cost of delay is greater than the cost of acting now to reduce greenhouse gases. Given the climate crisis we face, governments at all levels and of all stripes should be investing a lot more to fight climate change to improve the health of Canadians, create jobs and deal with what is an existential issue for humanity.
That said, some important investments were made in the 2019 federal budget. Environmental Defence supports the climate action rebate that goes to households in provinces where the federal carbon tax is applied. Over time, we feel that more of that revenue needs to be invested in further reducing carbon emissions, while at the same time continuing to protect those households that are vulnerable or on low income.
We also welcome the $1-billion investment in improved energy efficiency in residential, commercial and multi-unit buildings. Buildings represent the third-highest carbon emissions in Canada. Making those investments makes sense. In addition to, of course, having a model building code that provinces can hopefully take up and start building buildings that are much more efficient and even zero net energy by 2030.
We also welcome the $435 million to support zero emission vehicles. We agree with the goal of phasing out vehicles with gas engines by 2040, but we also know that the way to ramp up electric vehicle sales and get those vehicles on our roads is to legislate electric vehicle sales, not just to finance charging stations or electric vehicle purchases. We look forward to seeing those kinds of initiatives to complement fiscal ones.
We also think that the investment towards a just transition for workers in communities was a necessary step. There's a dedicated $150-million infrastructure fund to diversify the economy. That's one part of the solution. The other part, of course, is to support retraining of workers who over time will be displaced.
On the not-so-good side, no progress was made in phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. We are close to the 10th anniversary of when Canada made the commitment with other G20 countries to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. Phasing them out has always made sense, given that transitioning towards clean renewable energy is the cheapest and easiest way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Handing public dollars to carbon polluters undermines that effort. Some limited progress had been made in previous budgets. It was good to see some transparency around the review that will be done between Canada and Argentina to look at each other's fossil fuel subsidies and to publish them. At the same time, this budget included another big handout to big oil: $100 million to lower the environmental impacts of oil and gas development.
We agree that oil and gas development has too high an impact on our health and on the environment. I don't understand why government should be paying companies making billions of dollars in net profits to improve their environmental standards. The federal government, like other governments, should be enforcing or strengthening its environmental laws and letting the big oil companies make the necessary investments to meet those regulations.
I'll leave it at that. Obviously, I'm open to answering your questions later. Thank you.