The urgency is there, but what I'd like to focus on is that while there is a climate urgency we need to act on, there's also a spending urgency. We are spending on the wrong items, and then we are wasting money on pollution and on uneconomic activities. When we put more vehicles on the roads, we are creating congestion and that is lowering our productivity.
Canada has one of the lowest energy to productivity indicators around the world, meaning that we are one of the countries creating the least wealth or having the lowest GDP per unit of energy we're using. This is because we're blessed with a lot of energy and blessed with low prices for energy, but in the long run that makes us non-productive.
We've talked about our productivity problems in Canada, and part of that is linked to the fact that we're using way too much energy to generate wealth, because we don't invest in the energy efficiency equipment that would raise our productivity. The carbon tax is helping on that because it makes investments in energy efficiency more profitable, and it helps Canadian businesses make investments that will structurally make them more productive.
It's not only a question of the urgency of acting against climate change; it's the urgency of getting society to be more efficient.