Environment committee  Thank you very much. I hope everyone has received a copy of the submission we sent in a few days ago. Before I get into substance, I would like to make clear that the Pembina Institute, which I'm representing today, is a strictly nonpartisan organization. We always try to com

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  As someone mentioned earlier, there have been literally years of consultations with industry on greenhouse gas targets. Fair enough. Many studies have been done on the cost of different levels of targets, so the time has come to draw all the information together and set some targ

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I would come back to something that Gordon Lambert said earlier, which is that what we need to do here to move toward deep reductions in emissions is to mobilize private capital to achieve a transformation in the economy. To do that, we need to set regulated requirements to reduc

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Very quickly, then, the motivation for emissions trading is clearly cost reduction, first and foremost. I'm troubled that when the government rules out the use of the international carbon market, it makes achieving our international obligations much harder than it really needs to

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I just think it really stretches credibility to suggest that an additional cost to the oil sands producers on the order of $1 a barrel would be in any way punitive or would somehow get us away from a balance between environment and economy. We heard from Gord Lambert that the pro

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  On the contrary, the provincial option is just one of a number of possibilities.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Not at all, we would still be able to do this elsewhere in the country or elsewhere in the world.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  We wanted to suggest an alternate way of reaching the targets for those who are not comfortable with funding projects abroad, the purchase of credits provided for by the Kyoto Protocol. The idea is to be able to pay $30 a tonne into a fund that would be independent of government.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  The work to put it in place could begin immediately, as soon as the clear expectation of a sufficiently high carbon price is there.

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'm certainly troubled by the fact that the federal government does not currently have a comprehensive climate change plan. It has made a series of isolated announcements that do not address all the key sources of emissions in Canada. Bill C-30, as it stands, is essentially a set

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  In our analysis of how that sector could become carbon neutral by 2020, we considered a number of scenarios that combined purchasing offsets—in other words, financing emission reductions elsewhere to offset the industry's emissions—with deployment of carbon capture and storage at

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  First and foremost, investing in real emission reductions in developing countries through the CDM is a perfectly legitimate way to take responsibility for emission reductions that are not achievable, in the very immediate timeframe, within Canada. It has a positive benefit on pro

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  First of all, I have a problem with the emissions trajectory that was laid out in the notice of intent that accompanied the Clean Air Act announcement, because it has a target for 2050, which represents substantial emissions reductions—not, I would add, ones that are sufficient f

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  There are already 18 megatonnes of carbon dioxide being captured and sequestered at a single site in Texas right now. There are over 3,000 miles of mainline carbon dioxide pipeline systems already in existence in the U.S. This is not a technology that is 15 years down the road; i

Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  The quick answer is that the industry does not face the regulated emission reduction requirement and the consequent price on emissions that would drive it to make those changes. In addition, there's really no mystery about those dollar numbers I quoted. A typical oil sands prod