Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the committee.
I appreciate the opportunity to appear today.
My name is Priyanka Lloyd, and I am the executive director of Green Economy Canada. I am pleased to join you from Waterloo, Ontario, which is the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee peoples.
I'm here to share a perspective on how the government of Canada can help businesses across the country to recover in a stronger and more resilient way post-pandemic. In particular, the focus of my remarks will be on the importance of investment to support small businesses to thrive and become more competitive in a global shift to a low-carbon future.
Green Economy Canada is a national non-profit that supports a network of community-based green economy hubs across the country. These hubs are working with 300 businesses of all sectors and sizes to voluntarily take action on climate change and to build sustainability into their operations. Through our network's decade of experience, we have seen first hand how businesses can reduce their environmental impacts while increasing their profitability.
Small and medium-sized enterprises or SMEs make up more than 99% of businesses in Canada. They employ nine in 10 private-sector workers and contribute more than half of our GDP. These are the businesses in your communities; the coffee shops, restaurants, retail stores, and countless other seen and unseen businesses that form the backbone of our economy. However, despite the vital role that small businesses play in job creation and innovation, they've been chronically overlooked in how they can help Canada achieve its climate action goals and reap the benefits of a greener economy.
As we look to recover from the impacts of COVID-19, now more than ever, small businesses need every advantage possible to get back on solid ground. This includes the substantial benefits that they can get from greening their operations. Take these examples:
Your Credit Union is a small financial services co-operative in Ottawa. By installing a building automation system, they were able to shave 30% off their annual electricity bill.
Walker Emulsions is a wax and asphalt emulsions company in Burlington. They were able to save $43,000 per year by installing a water softener to reduce the build-up in their process heat exchangers.
VeriForm is a small steel and metal fabricator in Cambridge, Ontario. They have been investing in energy efficiency upgrades for over a decade and have saved over $2 million while doubling their facility size and expanding their workforce by 30%. These investments have also allowed VeriForm to weather shocks like U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs.
Permanently lowering operating costs helps businesses withstand economic downturns and leaves room to reinvest in jobs and growth, which keeps more dollars circulating in local communities. Multiply this impact across hundreds of thousands of small businesses and communities in Canada, and the result is not just recovery but growth, clean green growth.
Moreover, as countries around the world are making bold commitments to move towards a net-zero future, the ability of Canadian companies to produce and export our goods and services in a low-carbon way will be critical for us to remain competitive on the global stage.
Existing discussions on the recent federal budget have focused on loans, grants, and digitization supports to help SMEs to recover post-pandemic, but the new-normal demands that businesses are also reducing their carbon emissions to remain competitive and resilient.
Green recovery investments for businesses in the federal budget were targeted on heavy industry and clean-tech manufacturing. While these are important and needed, they do little for the vast majority of businesses in Canada. Without meaningful investments to support SMEs to seize the low-carbon advantage, this critical segment of our economy risks getting left behind and will find it difficult to adapt to key regulations like a $170 per tonne carbon price by 2030.
Moreover, small businesses will feel mounting pressure from larger organizations who are now aligning with net-zero emissions targets to demonstrate how they are reducing their emissions as part of an increased focus on greening the supply chain.
Based on the feedback from our network, and our experience with previous climate action programs, we urge the government of Canada to invest seriously in helping small businesses to reduce their emissions.
We hear time and again that many small businesses are concerned about climate change and want to do their fair share, but they need more direct support to overcome the barriers they face in doing so.
Small businesses need targeted financial [Technical difficulty—Editor] and deeper, direct support to help them make lasting changes to their operation that are good for the planet and good for their bottom line. This includes support for small businesses to set goals and develop concrete plans aligned with achieving Canada's 2030 and 2050 climate targets, the way that larger organizations are doing.
In closing, we applaud the federal government for its commitment to climate action and making significant investments that can drive a green recovery. However, to ensure that our economy thrives in the transition to a net-zero future, we cannot forget to invest in small businesses to do their part.
The support we provide to small businesses now will determine not just Canada's ability to meet our international commitment, but if we are successful in setting businesses on a path to a stronger and more resilient future.
Thank you.