I can't reconcile his statements. From what I have found, the minister is wrong. There is an active, growing market. With respect to limited liability corporations, since October there have actually been four IPOs of limited liability corporations that effectively operate like trusts and shift taxable income through to unitholders to pay their distribution tax, and those are active exploration and production companies. I do believe that those companies will start looking towards Canadian trust assets at some point. The U.S. energy basin is similar to the Canadian basin--it's a very mature basin. We're shifting to where it needs to be developed and exploited. It doesn't need to be explored any more.
On January 30th, 2007. See this statement in context.