Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I'll be brief, because I know we're at 5:30. By the way, Project Neutral is a great partner of ours, so it's neat to see the connection. As to your first piece about 50% tax break, I think that is a really good element. It will help to keep businesse

Finance committee  Absolutely, I feel that there needs to be more investment in the green economy. The perspective that I'm here to share today is that I think too often the discussion focuses on big business and on technology, and doesn't really address the value of engaging the vast majority of b

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear today, and I'm pleased to be joining you from Waterloo, Ontario, traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishnabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Green Economy Canada is a national no

Industry committee  Is that standardization in terms of supports or just in terms of what is required for businesses to green their operations?

Industry committee  There was an article published in the Globe and Mail recently about the need to have more consistency in how businesses in general, whether they're small businesses or not, are defining what getting to net zero means. Right now there's not even consistency there in terms of how o

Industry committee  Yes, for sure. To that point about existing support, I think one of the barriers businesses face in accesing that and which I didn't share is that right now they're not being well-served by the private sector. Consultants are often very expensive for small businesses to afford,

Industry committee  Thank you. The upfront financial cost is a significant barrier, but what we're seeing is that it is time. They don't often have dedicated people in-house who focus on sustainability. These aren't skills they initially had or were taught to do. The second thing is that, in terms

Industry committee  Absolutely. The federal government has set goals to be net zero by 2050 and there's a lot of talk about this. The pathways of how we're going to get there are still largely unknown. A level down, the role that SMEs are going to play or how they are going to be impacted is also s

Industry committee  Absolutely. Tax credits would help. Incentive programs like I talked about before would help, too, to reduce some of the upfront capital costs. Even the funding that's available to support [Technical difficulty—Editor] development skills within the organizations. One of the thi

Industry committee  Absolutely. There are a couple of categories. In terms of retrofit projects and project design, making smaller projects eligible and providing more upfront capital is going to help those businesses actually take on those projects and access those things. Streamlining the applicat

Industry committee  Thank you for the question. Our local green economy hubs, like the ClimateWise Business Network in York region, are membership-based and any business can sign up. Some 85% of the businesses in our network are small and medium-sized enterprises. In signing up, they get support to

Industry committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear today. My name is Priyanka Lloyd, and I am the executive director of Green Economy Canada. I am pleased to join you from Waterloo, Ontario, which is the traditional territory of the Neu