Thank you, Commissioner. I only have a short time, and there are a few questions I want to ask you in follow up.
Basically we don't know yet how many megatonnes of carbon have been reduced as a result of the carbon tax that has been in place in some jurisdictions for now over a decade here in Canada. So, we don't really have a metric. We're not sure if it has been successful, but we do know, however, that the cost of living for Canadians has gone up substantially due to various pressures, inflationary pressures, including the carbon tax, and yet we're not sure if it's having any impact on the reduction of carbon in the environment.
Then we go a step further. We can also probably deduce that this is most likely having a far more consequential impact on low-income Canadians living in rural Canada. So it's disproportionately affecting those in rural Canada as well as those who are more likely to be at a lower income level than other Canadians.
Is there a justification for the carbon tax approach if we can't even measure what we're seeing and we don't have a report? We don't have a study that says that so far this approach is working. A follow-up question to that is, if we are to put a price on carbon and we're not having impact to this point, by how much more do we have to increase the cost of living of Canadians in order to have an impact that would in fact reduce carbon?