The investment climate in this country is very much a subject for the finance committee. I will quote from the Bank of Canada's monetary report from today:
In the energy sector, which accounts for roughly 20 per cent of business investment in Canada, the Bank forecasts that investment will decrease in 2018 and remain roughly flat thereafter. Investment in new projects is being held back by reduced competitiveness resulting from regulatory and US policy changes.
The regulatory changes here and the tax policy changes south of the border are moving money out of our country and down south. This might make Donald Trump happy; it shouldn't make any of us happy around this table.
The second reason this is very much an issue for the finance committee is that now we have the finance minister, for some unknown reason, responsible for arranging financing for a project that was already privately funded. We're reading news reports that he's travelling around and flashing the government credit card to try to salvage the damage his government has caused. This is an approach we should study.
Right now we have an approach by the government that holds back economic activity and tries to subsidize it back into existence. It's like the old saying, “If it moves, Liberals tax it. If it keeps moving, Liberals regulate it. If it stops moving, Liberals subsidize it.” That's what we see here. They've wrapped these projects in so much regulatory red tape that they cannot be financially sustainable on their own. Then all of a sudden the finance minister shows up and says, “Now that we've ruined your project, we'll give you some taxpayer money to resuscitate it”. Is that the best way to build a free-market economy? That's something this committee could study.
We are the finance committee. He is the finance minister. He should be here testifying about the approach he's taking to undo the damage his government has caused the energy sector. It is within the purview of the finance committee. It is the most pressing controversy in the country today. And there is not a single reason this committee could not be tasked with doing this job.
I ask members of the other side, what harm would it do if we, as a committee, were to study this? What possible harm could it do to bring light to the questions Tom Kmiec has raised in his motion? If it will do no harm, and if there is a chance it might do some good, let's study it.