Certainly, the federal government has a certain role to play, if only in terms of tax policy. As you said, the market does not necessarily regulate everything on its own. Subsidies for oil and gas companies, in fact every kind of subsidy or tax relief can have an impact.
The federal government can also take action on air quality standards. A Canada-wide initiative to harmonize standards for air quality has been adopted by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. The first thing the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment will do will be to strengthen standards for fine particles and ozone precursors. By 2015, we want to adopt new Canada-wide standards in order to harmonize and to facilitate monitoring, to better target problem spots and to make sure that the provinces have action plans and are offering mutual assistance to achieve that objective.
At present, ozone exceedences have already been observed. We already have air quality problems, days when the air quality is poor or marginal. We now want to strengthen the standards and make them more stringent. If we keep the same level, we would have more poor air quality days.
As well, and this is clearly established in the Haynesville study you cited in the brief, researchers have done modelling on Haynesville based on a similar development in Quebec. In that study, we clearly see a significant increase in ozone, 16 parts per billion, when the Canadian standard is 65 parts per billion. If we add 16 parts per billion in some places, we will have more poor air quality days. It is inevitable, because we are adding pollution.
In Quebec alone, the health costs associated with poor air quality are estimated at $2 billion. In fact, studies vary, because some talk about $2 to $9 billion. So this is a significant impact. Obviously, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, it is the federal government that represents us at the international level. It is the official voice.
That being said, in the Cancún Agreement, Canada, like other countries, set targets to limit global warming to 2oC, to avert catastrophic climate change. Based on current targets of the developed countries, the increase in global warming would be 3.5oC. That clearly means that all of the developed countries will have to revise their targets and adopt more ambitious ones to avert catastrophic climate change. I'm not the one talking about catastrophic climate change, it's the IPCC. So it is very serious.
We can see on the Environment Canada site that the current Canadian target has not been met. With what is on the table for Canada, we are a long way from meeting that target. Since we aren't going to meet that target, we have to go a lot further. To go further, we will have to start making a U-turn and investments will have to be made in this. In my opinion, the federal government has a major role to play in this regard.