Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here, and for the testimony. I'm looking forward to getting to some questions.
Before I do that, I would like to move the motion I brought forward at the last meeting and gave notice of. I will read it again, but everyone should have it in their digital binder.
It says:
That the committee undertake a five-meeting review of the impact of the carbon tax on the transportation sector and the increased costs it places on Canadians. That the Minister of Transport appear on this matter, and that the committee find additional resources necessary to accommodate these meetings.
Mr. Chair, just this week, the environment commissioner tabled his report, which indicated that Canada will not meet its climate targets, despite the carbon tax and other measures the government has imposed on Canadians. We know the carbon tax has a specific and particularly significant impact on the transport sector, whether it's trucking, trains or buses. We heard, in our study, that it was a significant cost. Marine and rail have carbon tax impacts. Those impacts are passed along throughout the supply chain to consumers.
One thing the commissioner said in the report he tabled was this:
...we expected that the plan would identify which groups would be disproportionately affected by the plan, which measures would mitigate those effects, and which process would assess if those measures are working. However, federal organizations lacked a comprehensive set of performance indicators and the disaggregated data (that is, separate data on affected groups) needed to understand the plan's effects on specific groups.
I think this committee has an opportunity to do the work the environment commissioner indicated had not been done by the government: to look at the specific impacts on the transport sector, which are then passed on to Canadian consumers. I think we should support this motion.
I move that one of our next studies be on the impacts of the carbon tax on the transportation sector.
I look forward to hearing what other committee members have to say about that.