Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Distinguished members of the Standing Committee on Finance, thank you for welcoming me today.
Before diving into the details of our recommendations, I would like to thank all the lawmakers here today for two things: first, for their efforts to ensure the safety of Canadians and for the economic support measures for workers and businesses; and second, for their support for the principle of zero emissions legislation, whether through a government bill or a private member's bill.
Much work remains to be done to ensure results and increased accountability, particularly in 2025, but with goodwill, it will be done. It must be done because the economic challenges of today and tomorrow are linked to environmental issues.
I am here today on behalf of Équiterre, an organization with more than 156,000 members and supporters. For more than 25 years, we have participated in debates related to agriculture, food, transportation and mobility, as well as to climate and energy policies in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
With respect to the transportation sector, we are delighted to see that the electrification of personal vehicles is a priority for the government and for the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
To achieve the objective of 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2040, incentives for buyers are a good starting point. However, as mentioned in our written submission, in order to increase the supply of zero-emission vehicles, we recommend that the federal government also implement a zero-cost measure that has been proven effective in Quebec, British Columbia and internationally, namely a Canada-wide standard for zero-emission vehicles.
On the demand side, incentives and charging infrastructure are not enough. We need an incremental combination of effective regulatory and fiscal approaches to accelerate the transition. In addition to the ZEV standard, we suggest reforming and integrating the iZEV and green levy programs, which should be administered by a single jurisdiction, to implement a true feebate system, another tax-neutral measure for government.
Still in terms of transportation, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce. This is affecting urban delivery services, increasingly causing negative externalities such as air pollution, GHGs, noise, or safety problems for the most vulnerable users.
If e-commerce continues to grow and no structured plan to decarbonize delivery services is launched, the consequences I have just mentioned will intensify, prompting additional societal costs for public health.
Yesterday, the City of Montreal introduced its climate action plan, with the flagship measure of creating a zero-emission zone in the downtown core by 2030. As a result, in addition to cars, electric trucks and cargo bikes will be needed to transport people and goods. We therefore recommend working with Canadian municipalities to develop, implement and fund a strategy to decarbonize urban freight transportation.
In terms of agriculture, it is important to put our main recommendation into context with the ongoing discussions on the reform of risk management programs and the renewal of the Canadian agricultural partnership.
Let me quote from the news release issued by the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food following the recent meeting of the country's agriculture ministers:
FPT governments are listening to farmers and stakeholder groups, who have been asking for meaningful changes and alternatives to the current risk management approach. Ministers agreed that programs need to improve to better target emerging risks that threaten the viability of the farm...
To this end, we propose that the government create and fund a new AgriResilience program to support farmers in the transition to farming practices that promote healthy soil and use less carbon, thereby reducing the growing climate risk in this sector.
Farmers are among the first to feel the ever-growing impacts of climate change, such as crop losses, impacts on the GDP, profitability, the viability of rural communities, mental health, and government insurance programs, for which spending is bound to increase.
In the fall economic statement, we applauded the announcement of $98 million over 10 years to establish a new natural climate solutions fund. We have just learned that the government has announced new investments of $165.7 million over seven years for the new environmental plan. We applaud the news, but this will not be enough to cover the needs of the sector, nor will it cover all solutions. By comparison, the Farmers for Climate Solutions coalition, of which we are a member, is calling for $300 million for environmental programs in the 2021 budget alone.
In conclusion, I would like to remind you of a traditional request from Équiterre about fossil fuel subsidies. I hope that this is the last groundhog day for this request. We ask that the federal government publish, in Budget 2021, a roadmap to eliminate ineffective fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 to meet Canada's G20 commitment in this area. Canada must recognize that asset managers are increasingly reluctant to take on the risks associated with the Canadian fossil fuel industry.
It would be more beneficial to keep pace with the transition and create jobs in sectors of the future, rather than to continue to pay the bill for resisting the ongoing transition. We need to be proactive, not simply reactive, in supporting workers in industrial sectors affected by the transition.
I would like to thank you for taking the time to listen to me. I am available to answer your questions.