Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to give a couple of minutes of my time to Mr. Thibeault.
One thing that was missed in the discussion here, and that's really important, is that this industry is the Canadian public's own product. It's operated by foreign multinationals that by far and large have had record profits and record bonuses and record payouts.
One chapter that hasn't been touched, and I'm rather surprised, is how much public subsidization goes into this industry. It's massively subsidized to the billions of dollars per year through a number of different things. I'm going to list just some of them that are important to note.
There are just the general corporate tax cut reductions that have been taking place over the last number of years. There is no doubt about that. I will remind everyone here that we're borrowing that money right now and paying interest on it until we get into a surplus right now. There's also the flow-through shares subsidy that's available, and the Canadian exploration expense subsidy. The Canadian development expense subsidy is available. The Canadian oil and gas property expense subsidy is available. And the capital cost reduction allowance subsidy is available.
When you take the last figures that are available, from 2008, this industry paid an average of 10.5% federal tax. Meanwhile, you had the manufacturing sector or small businesses paying 16.5%.
To Mr. Boag and Mr. Labonté, why do Canadian taxpayers have to massively subsidize this industry, given the fact that it has this profit margin in its multinationals?