Mr. Chairman, thank you for the question.
First of all, as I stated in my remarks, we feel that ACCA is not a subsidy to any particular industry. It's in fact deferred tax revenue. It's revenue that, arguably, the federal government would not receive due to the fact the majority of these projects would not be approved by their proponents without some sort of an incentive such as ACCA.
With respect to your question about excess capacity south of the border, the oil sands industry is predicting—and I stand to be corrected—an almost doubling of production over the next five to ten years, so much so that we expect there will not end up being excess capacity for refining of oil sands bitumen. I'm sure you are aware that the bitumen coming out of Alberta's oil sands is significantly different from feed stock that's used primarily by refineries and upgraders south of the border. They do need to be retooled, and at significant cost. That does create an opportunity for Alberta and Canada to realize some of that potential by incenting the construction of upgrading capacity in Alberta and other places in Canada.
