There's an optimistic strategy and a pessimistic strategy. I mentioned them quickly at the end. The pessimistic strategy is that we have to make sure we protect our rights and Mexico's rights to honour our obligations under the Paris agreement from actions that penalize Canadian producers and Canadian companies that have actually obeyed Canadian law.
Normally, in trade agreements, the international environmental agreements are listed by name, and in NAFTA, the Framework Convention on Climate Change is not listed. At the very least, Canada should make sure it is listed, because if it's there, then Canada pursuing its obligations under that convention is non-actionable in trade terms.
The more optimistic one that I explored very briefly is that the future of a clean economy in North America is an enormously optimistic one, which could provide jobs. It could provide all kinds of employment opportunities and all kinds of technological opportunities. We're really at the stage now where Bloomberg New Energy Finance reckons that by 2022 it will be cheaper to build a solar power plant from scratch than it will be to operate an existing gas-powered plant in the United States, so the economics are changing very rapidly.
The Trump administration may be looking for some sort of an out on climate change. They're not going to sign up to Paris again, but they may be looking to try to improve their reputation a bit. The administration is under enormous pressure now from governors. There's a list of 30—mainly Republican—governors, who wrote to the president saying, please don't mess around with renewable energy; our states are very dependent on it.
Large companies like Walmart are investing tons of money now in renewable energy. It's an idea that's coming, and it's going to come no matter what the president does. If they're looking for a way to begin to leaven the effects of what they've said about climate change, to be in favour of the growth of the clean-tech sector and of a cleaner economy would be a very good way to do it. There are ways in which we could modify NAFTA to permit tariff-free and barrier-free entry to environmental goods and services.
We can do something about fossil fuel subsidies, which all the parties in this House and all the G20 members—including the United States and Mexico—have committed to eliminate. We could also do something about this funny little commission in Montreal, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. Instead of seeing it swept out the door, which it will be if you bring the environmental provisions into the treaty, it could in fact be a clean economy commission. It could give advice, which could begin to create discussions, which could help to harmonize regulations on energy efficiency, for example. You'd get the three countries talking about something that wasn't climate change. They'd actually be talking about clean energy, which is a big employer and a very profitable enterprise.