Madam Speaker, the member's ability to fit misleading and untrue rhetoric into a short question is remarkable. Let us stick to the facts.
First of all, Alberta has 10% of Canada's population. I love Alberta. I have tons of friends there, and I go to Edmonton, Calgary and Canmore all the time. I absolutely love Alberta and Albertans. I also know that Canada relies heavily on Alberta for energy, and that is important to recognize and appreciate in Canada. However, it is also important to recognize that Alberta has 10% of Canada's population while the industry there is responsible for 40% of Canada's emissions. That is a big discrepancy.
Let us also consider that oil and gas as a whole is worth about 5% of Canada's GDP and 31% of Canada's emissions. These are things that need to be addressed. If the Conservative Party, particularly that member, wants to ignore the fact that Canada's oil and gas sector is having an outsized impact on our emissions profile in Canada and on Canada's disproportionately high carbon footprint, then that is irresponsible and it is irrefutably biased toward only one aspect of Canada's economy. Every aspect of Canada's economy is important. That includes energy, but a government's job is not to suck up to industry. Our job is to regulate industry and ensure that it is fair, competitive and ethical. That is what we are doing with a pollution cap on the oil and gas sector. That is what the member and those members on the Conservative side are opposed to.
On the environment committee, we have been working on a taxonomy of sustainable finance and disclosure for all companies in Canada, but the Conservatives stand against all of that type of regulation. They do not believe that climate change is caused by the burning and production of fossil fuels. They want to turn a blind eye to all of that.
The Conservatives also do not listen to economists, who have repeatedly asked for Conservatives to tone down the rhetoric against carbon pricing. I point to the conclusions of a group of well-established, extremely well-educated independent economists from across Canada, called the Ecofiscal Commission. They analyzed Canada's pollution-pricing policy and concluded that it is absolutely the best way to do two things: reduce our emissions and grow a green and robust economy. They are not the only ones who know this fact. Countries around the world have been using some sort of pollution pricing to grow their green economies for decades. The World Bank confirmed that there are now 75 carbon pricing instruments in operation worldwide.
To listen to the opposition, one would think that the government's approach to pollution pricing is some type of isolated experiment, but it is not. It is an internationally recognized and widely adopted economic mechanism, and it actually has its roots in conservative economics. William Nordhaus, who is a Nobel Prize winner, says that Canada is getting it right regarding carbon pricing, which is the topic of his Nobel Prize. There is a whole world of support for carbon pricing out there, and if an entire commission of independent Canadian economists is not good enough for the member to understand how pollution pricing is so effective, then how about asking the leaders of 30 or 40 different countries that we trade with and that are also using different market-based instruments to lower emissions?
It is very clear that the Conservatives want to turn a blind eye to unlimited pollution from certain sectors, but Canadians can count on the Liberal Party to stand up for them, for their health, for lowering our emissions and for maintaining Canada's competitiveness in an increasingly decarbonizing global energy market. These are Canadians' partners in a global effort to reduce our emissions, but the Conservatives want to turn a blind eye to all of it, which is what the Stephen Harper government did. They want to get us out of the Paris Agreement and pretend we have no action to take on fighting climate change.
One last statistic for the member is that we are 0.5% of the global population and 1.5% of global emissions. That is an outsized impact on the environment, and we need to address it.