Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all our witnesses for appearing before us today. I certainly have found your testimonies and your responses very informative.
I want to start by talking about greenhouse gas emissions. There are nine areas of the world—China, U.S., EU, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, India, Japan, and Germany—that represent 70% of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. Canada is about 1.8% , and as you know our government has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by the year 2020.
As the Minister of the Environment announced in August 2012, we are now better than 50% of the way towards accomplishing that goal. We believe it's a realistic target to get there by 2020, and it's in accordance with the Copenhagen accord that we signed, and it's also aligned with the United States.
I want to start with you, Mr. Morin. We're accomplishing this by focusing on the two largest sources of emissions for us here in Canada: electricity and transportation. You're representing the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers of Canada with 931,000 vehicles sold in 2012 here, I believe you said. From the research I've done, the associations you represent, a group of 15 or so companies, employ about 77,000 people, and 50% of those vehicles sold in Canada were built in North America. I was struck by your comment. You speak about Canada-unique vehicles. Can you tell us how that would be different from our biggest neighbours just south of the border? What are the requirements here that are so different from those in the U.S.?