Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for having me.
My name is Catherine Cobden, and as mentioned, I am the president of the Canadian Steel Producers Association. We thank you very much for the opportunity to provide input to you in terms of your pre-budget deliberations.
I'm here today representing our member companies, who are the producers of steel. They produce approximately 15 million tonnes of steel products, and they support approximately 123,000 direct and indirect jobs.
Canada's steel sector plays a strategically important role in the North American economy. We are advanced manufacturers of a 100% recyclable product, and we are also a critical supplier to other key Canadian sectors, such as the automotive sector, the energy sector, the construction sector and many other general manufacturing operations. Given the important role we play, it is imperative that we maintain a steel sector that is strong, competitive and addressing its climate emissions. Our input into your budget deliberations today will focus on three strategic goals: driving investments to create the low-carbon economy, leveraging climate policy to Canada's competitive advantage, and addressing ongoing global trade risk and uncertainty.
The Canadian steel industry has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 31% since 1990. This is a track record that we are immensely proud of as a very large emitter. To go further, however, in our reductions, we'll require breakthrough technologies and solutions that, unfortunately, simply do not exist today. The scale and investment that will need to be dedicated to our transformation require partnership with our government and others, and together we can get it done. The steel sector is prepared to find solutions, and we do have ongoing collaborations. We are looking at working with our suppliers, our customers and the clean-tech industry to find these solutions, but frankly, we have an urgent need to accelerate this development and to do more to support our decarbonization efforts.
As a very first step, we urge the government to ensure that the revenue generated by the federal pricing system is recycled back to large emitters like ourselves and that existing programming is deepened with funding directed specifically to the decarbonization of key sectors. This should be done immediately to help spur the development of the necessary breakthroughs for dramatic emissions improvements in the longer term.
We also recognize that Canada's climate leadership offers both an immediate opportunity, as well as some risk, for our sector. We know that our greenhouse gas emissions profile is significantly less than that of foreign steel being imported from places such as China and other faraway jurisdictions. This is a very important opportunity to ensure that the inherent values and benefits of carbon, of Canadian steel in Canadian projects, are recognized through the domestic procurement efforts right across the country. We also know that more renewable or non-emitting energy sources will play an important role in Canada's steel sector.
On the other hand, we stand at a disadvantage compared to other steel-producing nations that do not face carbon costs. This is the dilemma. While we want and commit to doing our part, we urge the government to investigate whether there are interim means to levelling the playing field to support our sector while we actively seek solutions to this pressing problem as others lag.
Now the North American steel market faces a relentless flow of unfairly traded steel imports due to a global overcapacity of steel to the tune of 440 million extra tonnes of steel. This is a significant amount. We continue to face challenging market conditions, as well, throughout North America. This reality creates a very difficult footing for our sector to advance our climate objectives, but advance them we must.
Canada has more work to do, however, to modernize our trade remedy system. For example, we call for improvements and increased resources for Canada's import permit system. This is necessary to increase the frequency and accuracy of import monitoring. Ideally, in our view, this would include the reinstatement of import permits for all shipments into Canada. It's a tall order, but it's required.
We are grateful for the Canada-U.S. understanding—and for the team Canada approach it took to make it happen—that was really established between the governments of Canada and the U.S. in May 2019. We're also excited about and supportive of the recently signed CUSMA.
We urge the government to continue to explore opportunities to work with the U.S. and Mexico on a North American perimeter to trade—that's what we're about—to strengthen the competitiveness of our North American region and to address global steel overcapacity that affects the entire North American region and to deal with unfairly traded steel imports that affect the North American region.
These collective efforts will strongly support the steel sector's ability to be competitive and to position us for the future of advancing our climate objectives.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the time.