Thank you to the committee, both for the invitation and for your work in investigating this important question. I join you from the territory of the Lekwungen-speaking people on southern Vancouver Island.
Canada set its goal to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and we're pleased that all of your parties have either endorsed that goal or called for even more ambition.
Net zero is a goal that's based on the scientific work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency and others, all of which are clear that it means immediate and dramatic shifts away from fossil fuel use and production in our society.
In our view, an oil and gas emissions cap is necessary to help meet Canada's goal.
In 1995, when I was 22, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers signed an agreement with then natural resources minister, Anne McLellan, to support voluntary industrial action to reduce the oil and gas industry greenhouse gas emissions and help Canada achieve its goal of returning to 1990 emissions levels by the year 2000. Needless to say, this did not happen. Instead, emissions from the oil and gas sector, from then until now, grew by about 50%, and the intensity of emissions from each barrel of oil produced in Canada grew by 16%.
As a direct result, Canada missed not only its 2000 target, but also its 2012 target and its 2020 target. That's a cautionary tale that I think of when today's oil and gas industry says that it's planning to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The fact is that pretty much every country that ramped up fossil fuel oil and gas production is now producing more greenhouse gases today than it did in 1990. The countries that are emitting less now than they did in 1990 made different choices and constrained the production of oil and gas and fossil fuels.
The goal, of course, is to avoid dangerous climate change. That means ramping down emissions from fossil fuel use and production. Fossil fuel production is a provincial responsibility. Of the provinces, only Quebec, which does not produce oil and gas, has signalled its intention to limit oil and gas production.
The federal government has clear authority, affirmed by the courts, to regulate national greenhouse gas emissions. We submit that it has the responsibility to ensure that one industry's emissions do not compromise our country's ability as a whole to meet national climate targets, as the oil and gas industry has done repeatedly.
Given that an emissions cap would be useful, how should it be structured? Here I would refer you to the submissions made by the Climate Action Network and its six other signatories, including West Coast Environmental Law, sent to you last week. That letter sets out five principles and 20 associated recommendations that we believe should govern the cap on emissions.
I don't have time to review them all right now, but I will direct your attention to the first three principles.
First, the emissions cap needs to follow an aggressive decarbonization pathway that does not prioritize the short-term profits of the oil and gas industry over a safe climate, or over other sectors of the economy that will have to do more to achieve the targets if the oil and gas industry does less.
Second, the emissions caps must cover all of the emissions associated with the oil and gas industry and result in absolute emissions reductions rather than just net emissions reductions.
In the coming days, we will be releasing a report, “Net Zero or Net Reckless”, which points out that while the net-zero target means we may be able to use some technological solutions to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, there are real limits on those technologies. The scientists who proposed net zero as a target are adamant that such technologies must be used only for essential and extremely hard to decarbonize emission sources and to restore the atmosphere by reducing what's already in it, not as a “get out of emissions reductions free” card that the oil and gas industry can buy and play. They cannot be used as an excuse to delay drastic emissions reductions or for the industry to meet a cap. It should be met through actual reductions.
Third, the emissions cap must be enforceable. We're not talking about a policy or an expected emissions pathway, but legally binding mechanisms with significant consequences for failure.
The emissions cap must quickly cap emissions from the oil and gas industry and bring them down to align, at least, with the high end of Canada's legislated 40% to 45% reduction by 2030 target, so that the burden of achieving the target is not passed instead to manufacturing, agriculture or other sectors.
We should not shy away from an aggressive cap that will help the industry shift how it provides energy away from oil and gas to renewable sources of power.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to any questions.