Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today, Mr. Chair.

I would like to start with a brief description of my background, which will help to understand my testimony better.

I spent five years working at the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development, and then almost 15 years at the Department of Finance in Ottawa. I also held the position of chief economist at Industry Canada. So I can say that I have seen and observed how the system works from the inside, since I have personally contributed to making the system work, the system in which private short-term objectives take precedence over longer-term objectives that focus on the common good, such as climate or population aging. I have gained a bit of perspective since then and I have concluded that public policies that are more impactful, when it comes to economic policies or finance, are necessary. I will come back to this a little later.

From a more personal perspective, I am teaching students in their twenties this fall, four times a week, most of them suffering from eco‑anxiety because of the growing harmful effects of climate change. Last week, I gave a presentation to the students at a CEGEP, young people about 17 years old, who have virtually no voice on this in our institutions. They want to know why too few people in previous generations, including my own, mobilized and did something about it. The baby boomers owe young people an enormous debt. They privatized wealth and socialized costs.

In a more personal context, I know the committee is also aware of the fact that greenhouse gases rose by 1.3% in 2023. We went down the wrong path, and this is making things even worse, in my opinion, based on what I said earlier.

The other thing I would also like to say is that I think the countdown starts in 2030, and that is the most important thing. We have to change our public policies and get on the right course in the fight against climate change by 2030. This is extremely important. The IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, keeps telling us this and hammering it into us. Personally, I always highlight this aspect in my public speaking and in my climate research.

Anyone with an understanding of economics or finance knows that economics and finance are closely related. One person's savings fuel another person's investments. And yet sustainable development and sustainable finance are nothing but oxymorons for the time being. Maximizing returns in the short term is actually and quite simply not compatible with a climate strategy. This has been clearly demonstrated in the work done by Alain Grandjean, Julien Lefournier or Gaël Giraud in Europe, for example, on green finance.

In a free market, we can compare a company adopting environmental rules that are stricter than other companies' to handicapping itself when it comes to competitiveness and costs. Given the existing rules, that would be fatal.

The government therefore has to do what it is here to do: secure the common good by legislating. Countries that are ahead of the curve in this regard are going to protect what they have gained. That is why, for example, Europe has deployed the first phase of its carbon tax at the borders, to correct for discrepancies in regulatory stringency. The United Kingdom will be doing this in 2027. As you know, this means imposing tariffs on carbon, which means on carbon-intensive imported goods.

The Government of Canada has put a robust carbon pricing scheme in place in addition to an ambitious path that is set to reach $170 per tonne of CO2 in 2030. That price is lower than what most economic cost analysis models show. It should be much higher. Given that Canada already has a robust carbon pricing system, Canadian businesses might not incur the tariff adjustment that will be implemented in the European Union. This would give our businesses an advantage over competitors who do not already have a carbon pricing system similar to the European Union's.

The other thing I want to say was raised by the previous panel—