Environment committee  That's wonderful. Thank you so much. At EcoAdvisors, we look at the financial opportunities of sustainability and a zero-carbon future. That's the business of what we do. We're a consulting business. It's a great opportunity for us to speak here because we tend to focus our atte

Environment committee  Thank you. I was going to end with a line from Schwarzenegger, which is basically, "I don't care if you believe in climate change, but if you believe in money then you should be interested in the price on carbon."

Environment committee  Yes, I fully agree with that. There is an interesting reality today that 45 national jurisdictions and 25 subnational jurisdictions have a price on pollution, whether it's a tax or an emission trading scheme. The most effective at emission reductions are those that have them joi

Environment committee  I fully agree. You see that same trajectory in California as well. There are examples in B.C. I think the Australian example is not quite unique.

Environment committee  We see the studies that demonstrate that, in future projections and in modelling the rebate system, and how individual households will be affected differently across the provinces. Interesting studies have been released in the last several weeks that demonstrate that, and I fully

Environment committee  I fully agree. I will give you an example. One of our clients is BHP, the mining company in Australia. They saw that opportunity during the carbon pricing system in Australia. That's exactly what happened. They saw the market opportunity and the financial opportunity and, as th

Environment committee  To be clear, we don't conduct academic research on the issue. We look at [Technical difficulty—Editor] examples and opportunities for our clients to make strategic decisions across their operations if they are private sector, or other decisions if they are from the public and [Te

Environment committee  I didn't comment generally on the state of the economy. I'll note a couple of things on that discussion, and also coming back to the B.C. example. Sometimes we conflate the overall state of economies with one policy decision or market issue, such as the price on pollution. When w

Environment committee  That's a really good question, and it's a little bit outside of our realm. We tend to target large emitters, large companies, that can have substantial environmental and social gains. A portion of our business does look at venture-stage companies and SMEs in the international co

Environment committee  I think there are a couple of facets here. One point I'd like to make is that carbon, unlike other commodities, is a fungible asset that is tradeable universally. In terms of taking an international leadership position, it's not only that. It's that if there's no universal price

Environment committee  That's what I'm suggesting. I think it's a pathway. If you look at a private sector company and the pathway to get to a zero-emissions future, the first step is disclosure. That's why Mark Carney and Mike Bloomberg set up the task force on climate-related financial disclosure. Di

Environment committee  I don't have that at hand right here, but the recommendations in the TCFD initial report would have some of those. There will be follow-up recommendations through those reports. What we are seeing is individual investors demanding things like CDP reporting from companies or remo

Environment committee  That's a great question. Why does a price on pollution necessarily get us to that pathway of 1.5 degrees by 2050? One thing that I'm unclear about in this overall discussion is what the government is proposing today. I heard you say carbon tax several times. That's not what I

Environment committee  I'll try to summarize a couple of thoughts around the comments from Mr. Godin. One, a carbon tax is not a silver bullet. We're at a point where we need all hands on deck, and all solutions we can come up with to get to the solution that you talked about, a 1.5-degree future by 2

Environment committee  We definitely are. There are a couple of things there. One, I disagree with the notion that we need to think globally and act locally. We need to think everywhere and act everywhere, because we're getting to the point that it's a critical issue. I do agree that we need to think