Environment committee  Have you made a comment on Bill C-30, the government's bill to deal with climate change, which would set targets to be announced in the spring of 2007? Would you have a position on that?

Environment committee  And we can walk through the insurance industry, or the forestry sector, the mining sector right now, huge, huge parts of our Canadian economy that are telling us at this committee, and other places in this Parliament, that climate change is affecting their bottom lines in a negative way, substantially so. I guess my question to you is, is it possible to grow our economy and not grow our greenhouse gas emissions?

Environment committee  If it is not feasible by 2012, when? I have been with the House of Commons since 1997, and we have been talking about climate change since then. We were told that it was not feasible in the short term, and you're saying that it still will not be feasible by 2012, and that we must have short-, medium- and long-term measures.

Environment committee  Looking at the percentage changes, both since we started tracking in 1992 and more recently last year, I'm sure you'll agree our performance is good. Similarly, I've talked about our climate change performance before this committee in the past and I think it's also good. There's more detail provided in the accompanying charts that back up those figures, and it also shows that generally our record is that we exceed our projections.

Environment committee  Mr. Myers, how critical do you see the issue of climate change being, reflecting on reports by Mr. Stern and others and the comment Mr. Drexhage made about Kyoto being more predominantly an economic or financial agreement than an environmental one?

Environment committee  Do we have case examples of what's required for the government to set up? Secondly, how important is it that the government actually has a climate change Kyoto plan--as an example, a large final emitters cap, or hard reductions for companies? Is stimulating your market not critical as well, in terms of the encouragement of your market?

Environment committee  So the oil sands industry or any other industry in Canada would have to compete for that international investment. But it's a useful mechanism, and clearly, one of the weaknesses of our approach to climate change is that we have not had a very clearly defined registry or a very clearly defined market. Our organization has been involved with Chile, with Brazil, with China in identifying projects where we can transfer manufacturing technology to reduce emissions, and one of the biggest problems is that we don't have a Canadian registry in order to book those initiatives and there's no way of monetizing that here, so the progress that is being made is simply not recognized.

Environment committee  I would like to know if, in your opinion, the Montreal Exchange has a good chance of being named the official exchange of Canada with respect to climate change. Could you tell us how this would be an advantage for the Exchange and what factors are in its favour?

Environment committee  I would imagine a very large part of our international aid budget should be then targeted on climate change and emission reduction. I think those are important. Frankly, every country can't be buying emission credits from around the world, because that's just saying it's not our responsibility.

Environment committee  There's also a redistribution of risk inherently in a price cap, in that what may not be a risk identified for large industry then becomes redistributed to other participants in Canada, other stakeholders in Canada. We're all going to pay for climate change and a price cap simply limits the risk to one group of stakeholders. There are alternatives to pricing caps: generous and early stage allowances to minimize a short-term price impact to heavy industry, recognizing that heavy industry is dealing with 25- and 30-year capital turnovers, in some cases, and that's always been the argument for why they have to behave differently from anybody else.

Environment committee  I'm accompanied today by Nancy Coulas, who is our director of national environmental quality policy. Nancy and I have both worked on climate change issues for well over ten years, and it may be a reflection of how long we've worked on this. Let me say at the beginning how much I agree with John and much of what he has said, and I hope that some of my presentation will support his argument as well.

Environment committee  Thank you. Next we have Mr. John Drexhage, director, climate change and energy.

Environment committee  With the technical expertise of the Montreal Exchange, our infrastructure, our self-regulatory framework, our experience and knowledge in managing markets, along with the intellectual capital in climate of the Chicago Climate Change, the partnership that we have created is uniquely positioned to build here in Canada a very efficient, professional market, with great transparency in the world of emissions trading.

Environment committee  I also want to mention that there are a lot of parallels drawn between the smoking issue and the resistance to the evidence that smoking was harmful, and the climate change campaign. There have been recent documentaries. I want to suggest that there are other lessons we can learn from this on how quickly smoking became socially unacceptable. Why can't we make producing greenhouse gases by individuals socially unacceptable, so that somebody like me who drives an SUV would be considered a social deviant, just like somebody lighting up a cigarette in this room?

Environment committee  Hopefully the private sector and communities habituated to looking for their own self-interest will see the opportunities, as well as the dangers, and respond accordingly. A role for government in this is to provide the best scientific information about climate change—its variability, trends, and future scenarios—and then engage the Canadian stakeholders, public and private, in an informed debate about what they can best do to respond to the risks and opportunities, and adapt accordingly.