At the current time we haven't asked the federal government to provide direct assistance to the industry, and I'm not aware of specific direct assistance that the federal government is giving in terms of specific programs.
There are general measures in place that affect all businesses, such as continuing to reduce the tax level, which I think provides some fiscal relief to all businesses, including the oil and gas industry. Having businesses taxes at a more competitive level helps in terms of being able to encourage more investment activity in the country.
There are some specific things in terms of looking at carbon capture and storage technology that the federal government has said it's willing to take a look at. In terms of more general things for the oil and gas industry, there isn't anything in particular that the federal government is doing right now, or that we've asked them to do. Internally, CAPP has started to take a look at whether we want the federal government to provide some assistance, and we've started some discussions, but we haven't got to a point yet of coming up with a position or a number of options that we'd like to talk to the federal government about.
I think I mentioned in my remarks that one of the industry's major concerns right now is availability of credit and being able to access credit in order to fund either new projects or ongoing operations. It is a major concern for the industry. It still remains a concern for the industry, especially for the medium and smaller producers. It also affects the large projects that a number of companies have stated they wanted to get going, especially in the oil sands area. Continuing to encourage more easing of credit availability is something we would like the government to do.
Certainly the Bank of Canada has done as much as we hoped it would do in terms of lowering its bank rate down to 0.25%. I'm not quite sure that has always translated over well to what the chartered banks are doing in terms of credit availability; I think some of that has not led to the easing of credit that we would have liked to have seen.