Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone.
I just have a general 30-second comment.
We live in a beautiful country, and we're blessed with a lot of natural resources. We're blessed with a lot of human capital as well.
On the natural resources front, yes, we are a producer of oil and gas, uranium, potash and a number of other things. Right now, we suffer from a discount of anywhere between $20 to $40 U.S., depending on the time of the year. This is called the Alberta discount and is a measure of WTI versus WCS. That really equates to anywhere, depending on where the discount is, between $15 billion to $25 billion that is lost for the Canadian economy. That $15 billion to $25 billion could be used for a lot of programs: funding hospitals, funding improvements to seniors programs, funding improvements to women's programs and under-represented youth groups.
As a person who grew up in northern British Columbia and who paid his way through university by working at a grain elevator and a pulp mill, I think that Canada's resources have served us pretty well. They've served me and my family pretty well. So, to listen to one of my colleagues from another party comment on how we should use our resources.... I just look back at all those good union jobs that are created from those resources all over British Columbia and Alberta, and I'll stand up for those folks and for the people who want to use our resources effectively.
I'll stop there and ask my questions.
This question is for the Business Council of Canada.
We don't want to be in a situation where the United States is fiscally with a deficit-to-GDP of 5%. We want to use what's called the shotgun approach and have targeted measures to ensure that we remain competitive, which I think we are. We don't want to have a race to the bottom. We don't want to have an LCD, a lowest common denominator.
Can you give your two top recommendations for this budget, Brian?
Please keep it to 20 seconds, unlike myself.