Thank you very much, Chair and members of the committee, for having me today. My name is Shoshanna Saxe. I am a professor of civil and mineral engineering at the University of Toronto and Canada's research chair in sustainable infrastructure.
What we build is the foundation of our society. It's the best expression of what we value and what we envision for the future. Transportation infrastructure in particular is the skeletal structure of all of our other infrastructure systems. Transportation influences where we live, where we work, how we travel, who we meet, what opportunities we have, and our consumption. It also drives how much pollution we make.
In Canada, transportation is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, second only to oil and gas, which is also largely about transportation. Every year 13,000 Canadians die from air pollution, which is also largely driven by transportation choices. For scale, in two years this is more people than have died so far from COVID. Our transportation pollution disproportionately impacts the young and those who live near busy roads, meaning it's an important question of both current and future equity.