Thank you very much, senator, for your interest in this issue.

I think there are a number of ways that we have taken action and shown leadership. I think one of the most important is how we’re addressing phasing out of coal. We have a Just Transition Task Force working with Alberta where we have actually gone to communities. We had labour representatives and business representatives going to communities and hearing the stories of workers and of those communities. If we want to be ambitious when it comes to climate change, we need to put people at the very centre of it. This is a lesson I’ve learned. It’s great to have good policies, but you need to have people be supportive. It’s actually a social justice issue.

I think one of the things that is incredibly important is making sure that every country phases out of coal as quickly as possible. To meet the Paris Agreement targets, we know that developed countries need to phase out by 2030, 2040 in China and 2050 for the rest of the world. To do that is going to require a great deal of effort. That is going to require ensuring a just transition where you are thinking about not just workers, but those communities. I think that’s incredibly important.

I think there’s a whole range of other measures that we’ve taken where we’ve shown leadership. Reducing methane by 40 per cent in the oil and gas sector may not sound like something really big, but it’s a large reduction in emissions. It was something we agreed to with the Obama administration. Unfortunately, the federal U.S. administration backtracked on that. That’s something we’d like to see internationally.

How do you put a price on pollution in a way that it’s going to be sticky policy? It’s extremely important that you can pass legislation, but as we’ve seen in other parts of the world, you can easily lose it with new governments. What I’m working really hard to do with a price on pollution is showing Canadians how you can do it in a way that makes life affordable but is also effective.

I know the world is watching. That is why I will continue working so hard to make the case for why it can no longer be free to pollute, how you can do it in a way that puts money in the pockets of people. The people who actually benefit the most have the lowest incomes because they pay the largest proportion of a small amount of money towards heating and other costs, so getting this money back will make a real difference.

There is a whole range of measures. I think one of the great things about the climate negotiations is that you have an opportunity to see what the world is doing.

I have also been extremely proud that we have had Indigenous peoples with us. We’ve pushed to recognize Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous rights and also an Indigenous peoples platform.

We all have a lot of work to do. Every time we go, we learn about other opportunities to do more as a country but also internationally as a world.