Good morning. It's wonderful to be back in person. Good morning to those out in virtual land. Daniel and I are very pleased to be here with you.

I'm here to talk about Canada's steel sector and the implications we see with the IRA, but just to remind you, we support 123,000 jobs across the country and play a very strategic role in the North American economy. We are an advanced manufacturer of a 100% recyclable material, and we are a critical supplier to many key North American sectors, including automotive, energy, construction and many other manufacturing applications.

As this committee knows well, we're highly integrated across North America, and the North American steel industry benefits from CUSMA and from steel products being traded fairly across our borders. The North American steel industry, however, is highly trade-exposed to unfair trade practices with an excess steel capacity of over 600 million tonnes, meaning that a lot of extra steel is looking for a home.

Canada's steel producers also embrace the green agenda. We make some of the greenest steel in the world, but we're not standing still. Recent announcements suggest that we're going to be over 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, and these are tremendous advancements.

The Inflation Reduction Act signals an important shift by our largest trading partner towards both fostering energy security and addressing the climate challenge. It builds significantly on policies and approaches that we must pay attention to. These developments will create opportunities for and threats to Canada, and it's very good to see this committee investigating.

To state the obvious, the IRA takes an enabling approach to the climate change challenge. A carbon price is not envisioned. In contrast, over the next eight years, the Canadian steel industry will face significant increases in carbon costs with carbon pricing rising to $170 a tonne by 2030. While Canadian and U.S. producers share a very strong track record of being the greenest and strongest climate performers, U.S. producers will be getting the benefit of the IRA investments and climate subsidies without facing an equivalent carbon cost, which will be in the billions of dollars.

Given the scale and breadth of the incentives in the IRA, we're also facing the increasing risk of failing to attract the significant investments required to decarbonize. While we have announced over $3 billion in investments in partnership with the federal and provincial governments, we still have a long way to go to reach our mutual goal of net zero. We are definitely competing in a global race to attract this investment so we need to take note.

We don't expect a dollar-to-dollar response with the U.S., but we do believe that Canada must further incentivize our capacity to both adopt and operate climate solutions such as hydrogen, renewable fuels, cleaner grids and so on, while at the same time looking to create market pull for green products.

We note that the IRA incentivizes additional green procurement policies, and it's built on top of domestic content requirements that create market pull for U.S. steel and other products while the Canadian ones are at a disadvantage. By contrast, we do not yet have procurement policies in Canada, and as a result, green steel is losing market share today to high carbon-intensive imports from foreign jurisdictions. We also see the U.S. directly linking trade policy to climate policy. A notable example is the global arrangement on sustainable steel and aluminium.

The U.S. has signalled climate change is a priority, and many of our products share a strong green track record, so I ask, is this an opportunity to further strengthen our relationship?

In summary, we think the IRA provides Canada with an opportunity to both reimagine our relationship with the U.S. and rethink here at home whether we struck the right balance between the regulatory side, investment supports and the full suite of policies we need to deliver climate action.

Thank you.