Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I trust you can hear me.
I appreciate the very warm Canadian welcome to your committee this morning. I believe it likely started with a request made by me and a number of other premiers to appear before the finance committee. I believe that request still stands, and we hope to hear back from them.
I think this is an important conversation for each of us as elected members, as next Monday we are going to see the carbon tax increase to a level that it was never committed to achieving at its introduction. I think it's important for us to think about the words “never say never”. We should never say never in this nation. I was at that meeting many years ago in Montreal, when there was a commitment made to go to a $50 carbon tax. Since then, what we've seen are commitments to go much higher than that.
I would point out that, more recently, on July 15, 2020, some statements were made by our Bank of Canada governor. He said, “Our message to Canadians is that interest rates are very low and they’re going to be there for a long time.” He went on to say, “If you've got a mortgage or if you're considering making a major purchase, or you're a business and you're considering making an investment, you can be confident rates will be low for a long time.”
Again, I would say “never say never”, because so much has happened since that point in time, on July 15, 2020.
What that did was provide a confirmation bias for some poor policy decisions and for advancing a continued poor policy decision in taking the carbon tax from $50 a tonne to a committed $170 a tonne now and beyond, which we will discuss here today.
Our ask is to pause the increase coming on Monday, but also the development of green electricity standards and clean fuel standards, which are really a second carbon tax. There's the standard to reduce methane by 75%, which is unachievable. The oil production cap—