The rapid amortization of capital is one of the biggest levers available to the federal government to encourage large-scale investment particularly for natural resource industries. It was widely used and has been in place since the oil sands were established in the 1990s, with the rationale being that enabling companies to overcome the risk of investment would require significant upfront capital and long lead times prior to payout.
The accelerated capital cost allowance does not necessarily change the taxes collected by the government. All it does is change the timing of payment. The government has used this tool in a number of different places, such as the mining sector and the oil sands sector, but it's currently in place for the manufacturing sector, and a recent addition was included in 2015, as I mentioned, for clean energy.
In oil sands, the opportunity for it right now is in encouraging environmental investment and innovation. That's the next phase. It has the potential to be transformational for the sector. This type of research could apply to the entire basin.