I think I can, and my initial remark actually addressed that.
Canada, in my opinion, is like Norway: you will be, for hundreds of years, an exporting type of nation. That means you are an OPEC country, but you run the policy like you are an importing country.
I want to correct one thing for the committee. It sounds like you have the impression that it's a social democratic government that runs this policy in Norway. We are run exactly the same and the conservatives are in government, which we have proven several times since the early seventies. This makes sense to Norwegians, and if you want to get elected as a Norwegian politician, you'd better make sense to the Norwegian voter.
We create jobs; we take the wealth home. We invest in Canada in the tar sands when that makes sense, which is what Statoil has been doing over the last years. We try to do a good job in Canada, and do it in an environmentally friendly way. It's difficult; it costs money. We have it.
The key, in my opinion, in The Tyee article and everything I've learned since I learned to love Canada, is why doesn't Canada invest in itself, in Canadians?
When I lived there some [Inaudible--Editor] the people invested in the Caribbean, and the U.S. came up and invested. Now, when you run an economy in the interests of Washington, D.C., well, what do you expect?
Look at the OPEC type of countries and what they do, and divest. Get yourself a negotiating position and follow up on it. But you need to put people into the business, so you understand where the margins are going and who is taxing what.
The way you're living off royalties and licence fees, that is very hard, because you have to change your policy every time prices change in the world market. If you live in it as an investor, a co-investor, a co-risk taker, then you can keep a positive attitude and the businesses will stay with you. The oil companies will complain. ExxonMobil—back then it was called Esso Production—said that it would leave Norway when we increased the taxes. Our minister at the time looked around the table and said, “Nobody has left the room, so we probably didn't increase the taxes enough”. That's a story for you.