Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I just want to take the opportunity to make clear that there is not a consensus around the table, among the members of Parliament here, that it is the role of the government to give direction to the private sector, given that we are not in a command-and-control economy. I think it's been clearly articulated, particularly in regard to the subject we are discussing, that it is the private sector that has to lead innovation. In many ways, government actually stifles the private sector and the combination of their policies and added costs can result in the very opposite thing that they say that they care about, by making these companies that already have a track record—in the case of 2016, a $2-billion investment in R and D across the Canadian energy sector with $1.45 billion of those private sector investments coming specifically from oil and gas and oil sands companies. It's very clear that if the government makes things more difficult for those companies, therefore, they will be less able to invest in innovation and R and D and continue to lead the world, as has been articulated effectively.
Just on that note, I would invite both Mark and Germain to make any comments you might want to make, specifically about the impact of a lack of clarity, for example, in Canada's case, regarding four major regulatory reviews that have not yet been completed. This is in addition to the bizarre spectacle of a government that seems to be driven by the social licence concept. On the one hand, they do things like talk about actively phasing out a world-leading energy sector while funding automotive and aerospace companies and on the other hand, they talk about increasing the costs by reducing expense allowances for oil and gas exploration in Canada.