Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am speaking now on behalf of my party. We have always believed that it is inappropriate for businesses that are already causing pollution to benefit from tax incentives or tax measures.
You may recall that the Environment Commissioner told us that very often, federal government departments — and I'm thinking in particular of the Department of Finance — do not comply with the strategic environmental assessment. That means that Parliament passes bills that provide significant fiscal incentives to polluting industries. Three years ago, we passed a bill to give $250 million to the oil industry.
My concern with respect to this amendment is that it will strengthen the polluter-paid principle, whereas we believe it should be the polluter-pays principle.
So, I would like to move a friendly amendment to that amendment. We could delete the words “including a just transition fund for industry” and add, after the words “or fiscal incentives”, the words “for green or clean industries”.
The subparagraph would thus read as follows:spending or fiscal measures for green or clean industries