Mr. Speaker, as my friend and colleague pointed out, the PBO released today an update on his analysis for the impact of the federal fuel charge on Canadian households, because unfortunately there had been a mistake made. The PBO report confirmed just recently that when we look at the direct costs of pollution pricing and the amounts actually paid by households, in terms of the fuel charge versus the amounts actually received back through the Canada carbon rebate payment, we can see that the large majority of Canadian families are much better off.
The PBO report also estimated the economic costs of implementing the carbon pricing regime, but it has not set these against the large and growing costs of climate inaction nor the economic opportunities of moving toward a greener, carbon-free future. It also does not necessarily take into consideration the enormous social and economic costs of climate change itself, which is a destructive force.
Canadians are forced from their homes every summer during wildfire events. In fact, a really alarming statistic I heard was that over 40% of the worldwide population displaced from their homes from wildfire was Canadian. That is crazy. Canada has only 0.5% of the global population, but 40% of the world's people who are displaced from their homes because of wildfire live in this country.
That is because we are also extremely vulnerable to climate change in Canada. We have a forest that is drying quickly due to warmer summers and shorter winters, and less snowfall and less snowpack. There are also less frequent and harder to manage precipitation events in western Canada, where a lot of rain will fall all at once but then not again for a couple of months.
We know that carbon pricing has not and will not cost families in the long run. What will cost us is doing absolutely nothing about climate change. Sadly, the Conservatives refuse to acknowledge that climate change is a threat. Some of them even refuse to accept the notion that it is human-caused and that we have a role to play, but what they cannot refuse to do is nothing. Canadians will not accept that at the ballot box. Climate change has been an issue when Canadians have gone to the ballot box, and I think that the Conservatives are really underestimating how much people care about fighting climate change.
Canadian families stand to gain financially in the long run from fighting climate change with a carbon price. Other counties have demonstrated that. Actually, since it is Nobel Prize season, it is worth pointing out that William Nordhaus, not a Canadian but a fan of the Canadian carbon pricing system, won a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on carbon pricing and lowering our emissions with that market-based tool.
Contrary to the numbers that the Conservatives continue to peddle, the commission concluded that carbon pricing would in fact boost Canadian incomes, on average, by $3,300 more in 2030 than if an alternative approach were taken or if absolutely nothing were done. Nothing is not an option.
The global clean-energy transition is here. I will say that it actually matters in agriculture as well. My colleague and I have been on this topic a couple of times, with respect to propane-based irrigation. Canadians want affordable food and they also want low-carbon food. Our agriculture system has a carbon footprint, and it is actually one of the higher carbon footprints in the world with respect to agriculture. There are some unavoidable aspects of that. A propane-based irrigation system is not as efficient and certainly not as carbon-friendly as other forms of irrigation that are available.
A price on pollution provides a pricing mechanism to steer the agriculture sector toward greener production methods, because other technologies do exist, which is different from other sectors where things might not be available. It is important for us to demand better from various sectors, transportation, agriculture, oil and gas, and energy, that they lower their carbon footprint.