Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for inviting the foundation here today. For Canadians to maintain a high quality of life with continued economic opportunity, we must increase Canada's long-term competitiveness through responsible environmental policies. We'v

Finance committee  In a nutshell, one solution would be a domestic emission trading system. No money would go offshore under such a system. It simply means that the government introduces a modest, declining cap on the amount of pollution each sector or industry is permitted to emit into the atmos

Finance committee  It would be a domestic emission trading system. It would be a closed-loop system. Buying offshore, be it trying to buy offshore credits or offshore facilities, would not count towards the domestic emission trading system.

Finance committee  Actually, we have some national water quality guidelines, but they are only guidelines. They're not enforceable. So we have a patchwork quilt of provincial and municipal water standards. In far too many instances, we have no water standards at all. One solution would be to look

Finance committee  Education, or the fancy term we use for it sometimes, social marketing, is creating a positive buzz around acting responsibly in connection with the environment. In the same way that four decades ago drinking and driving was a wink-wink, nudge-nudge thing, or smoking inside was a

Finance committee  That's a fantastic step in the right direction that's been coming along in harmony with the U.S. It's a fantastic step, yes.

Finance committee  The World Economic Forum ranking--I want to be very even-handed about this--much to my chagrin, didn't take environmental sustainability into account as one of the indices in ranking the countries on their competitiveness. Of course, in the OECD ranking we did late last year, we

Finance committee  Yes, it was introduced in the U.K. in 2002. It's been meeting its targets of both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing fuel costs for employees and employers.

Finance committee  I haven't seen switch green introduced anywhere. In essence, it supplies that model to the Energy Star appliances we're all familiar with. But where there is currently a small price gap between the efficient Energy Star appliance and the inefficient non-Energy Star model, we try

Finance committee  That's right. EnerGuide will tell you what the electricity performance is of every model, and Energy Star is a label that certain efficient models receive.

Finance committee  As we've said over the past few weeks as details of the pending legislation have been leaked out, we're always glad to see a shift away from voluntary mechanisms, which is what the government has said it will do with this legislation. What does concern us is the considerable leng

Finance committee  That's what we've been saying in connection with the information we've heard about this legislation. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, CEPA, has all the tools necessary in the tool kit for the government to act right now to reduce pollution.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the members of the committee for inviting me here today. The belief that there is a trade-off between the environment and the economy still exists in some quarters, but this belief is in steady decline. Instead, there is a growing realizatio

Finance committee  I haven't formulated an opinion on that. The foundation may put out a press release around that, but I don't have an opinion on that, Mr. McCallum.

Finance committee  Yes, Mr. Mulcair, the absence of a common sustainable development strategy nationally is an impediment to making progress on a number of environmental fronts. Canada promised at an international forum in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and at the World Summit on Sustainable Development i