Thank you so much, Angela, and thank you to the committee.
Thank you very much for this invitation to appear today.
I would first like to acknowledge that I am currently in Tiohtià:ke, commonly known as Montreal.
I would like to begin by telling you that, in 2020, as we experience this devastating crisis, we are also celebrating the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement and 30 years, almost 31 now, of climate action.
I would like to complete my colleague's remarks by adding some climate-related factors.
COVID-19 has weakened us to the extent that we have discovered the vulnerability of the system that governs us. It has also shown us that, in terms of climate fairness and the ecological transition, it is not a matter of deciding whether or not we want to make that transition. The only decision to be made is how ambitious the actions we undertake will be, and the level of risk that we are imposing on future generations through policies such as those, for example, that the Parliament of Canada is adopting.
As for free trade, COVID-19 has a direct impact on the industries that depend on international supply chains. More specifically, energy exports have been affected simultaneously by COVID-19 and by geopolitical conflicts that have led to a decrease in the price of oil, a decrease that reached 21% in March 2020 over the same month a year earlier. Overall, we have seen a drop in exports and imports of automotive products, machines and material for electronics.
This leads me to an important factor, namely Canada as an energy exporting country.
COVID-19 has heavily impacted the fossil fuel sector. Restrictions in economic and social activity and travel triggered the biggest shock to global fossil fuel consumption in seven decades. Oil prices plunged to historic lows in some places. Countries reliant on oil revenues found themselves saddled with additional hardship in the midst of the health crisis. That fact shows that in the context of Canada, we continue living under the impression that we could both meet Paris Agreement goals and increase coal, oil and gas production. Accepting that reality is not something I see this Parliament doing now as it oversees the future of Canada's trade policy during the recovery.
Canada has already committed to global net-zero emissions in 2050, though we are a country that has never met its emissions target. We feel that it is the role of Parliament to analyze and address the incoherent approach that suggests that Canada could meet its climate goals while at the same time projecting an increase of 6.4 million barrels per day, or 187 billion cubic metres of gas through fracking in 2030.
The trend of decarbonization is moving rapidly, with economies around the world committing to stronger climate ambition. That means that trade and foreign policy will be impacted both by climate action and climate impacts, and will particularly impact oil-producing countries like Canada.
The IEA has said that producers could lose up to $7 trillion U.S. by 2040 as economies decarbonize. Economies unwilling to diversify will face higher economic and geopolitical instability.