Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Committee members, my name is Pascal Forest. I'm a producer of fresh and processed vegetables in the Lanaudière area. I'm also the president of the executive committee of Producteurs de légumes de transformation du Québec and a member of the board of directors of Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada.

I want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak about issues of great concern to Quebec's agricultural sector and to Canadian producers in general. The committee has fittingly chosen to look at border carbon adjustments at the same time as reciprocity of standards for Canadian agriculture. From our perspective, these are two sides of the same coin.

In principle, border carbon adjustments, or BCAs, involve applying an adjustment, meaning a tax or rebate, to traded goods based on their estimated greenhouse gas emissions. Again, in principle, this adjustment would make it possible to take into account differences in emissions reduction policies around the world. As other witnesses told you, BCAs haven't yet been introduced in any other part of the world and they aren't being considered for agriculture. There are many reasons for this, including the lack of a credible and cost‑effective global compliance system.

Closer to home, the diversity of carbon pricing systems, such as Quebec's cap‑and‑trade system, would make benchmarking difficult or even impossible. We may want to revisit this issue in the future. However, today, if we want to discuss how best to mitigate the market distortions resulting from carbon reduction efforts, we must focus on the far better policy and regulatory regime governing American agriculture.

In their testimony last week, my colleagues from the Association des producteurs maraîchers du Québec already pointed out many differences between the Canadian and American regimes and their impact on our competitiveness. I won't repeat them this morning. I do want to be clear. The competitive imbalance between Canadian and American producers resulting from our countries' respective carbon reduction policies poses a real and growing threat.

American farmers are benefiting from the $20 billion allocated under the American inflation reduction act to support their transition to net‑zero practices. In Canada, we're facing rising input costs brought on by carbon pricing. This imbalance will only get worse. If the issue remains unresolved, over the coming years, Canadian producers will continue to drive innovation to reduce their carbon footprint and production costs, but will see input prices continue to rise. In turn, American producers will boost innovation and reduce their carbon footprint while cutting production costs as a result of the support from their federal government.

If this imbalance isn't urgently addressed, American producers will benefit from cost reductions resulting from technological advances and other innovations. Meanwhile, Canadian gains will be offset by the growing burden imposed by our carbon pricing system. We urge this committee to focus on the real and growing impact of the carbon pricing system on the Canadian horticultural sector, rather than on border carbon adjustments, which currently remain largely theoretical in agriculture.

Thank you. I look forward to answering your questions.