Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to direct my questions to Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Bloomer.
I have the pleasure of representing the riding of Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, which is really Canada's hub for energy-related manufacturing. We have the industrial heartland, and I'm very proud of our region and the jobs that are created there, but also across the country.
I did want to pick up on the issue of accelerated capital cost allowance, because I was a bit concerned by some of the comments made by the Liberal member. I think this is a good opportunity for us to talk further about just what accelerated capital cost allowance is and how important it is for creating jobs in my region and across the country. So many of the products we use on a regular basis come from energy development. Even the election signs that we use are a derivative of a petroleum product that is in plastic. Even Liberal and NDP election signs come from the energy sector in some sense.
Accelerated capital cost allowance is not a cost to government. In fact, it's an economic incentive that creates opportunities for the government to generate revenue, because it allows companies that make major investments in energy-related manufacturing to write off the cost of that capital earlier on. It creates jobs, but it also creates an opportunity for revenue.
Given the situation right now in Alberta, with relatively higher unemployment than we've seen in the past, it just seems to me that now is a very good time to create incentives for these kinds of projects. Now is a very good time for more activity in the downstream sector. I know that we have you gentlemen here representing the upstream sector and the transportation part of our energy resource sector, but I wonder if you could talk a little more about the importance of accelerated capital cost allowance and maybe the kinds of things that we could include in the budget that would create incentives for the downstream sector for energy-related manufacturing.