Mr. Speaker, I know the minister is concerned about not getting into the subsidy war. That is not where the world economies are actually headed. I concur with him on that particular point.
There are initiatives we can take that are clearly not from a subsidy driven perspective. I will point out a couple of them. One is that he could talk to his colleague in international trade and commission a very small team of maybe two or three persons to actually work on establishing some form of a bilateral accord with the Americans with respect to penetration into the U.S. marketplace on certain types of ships.
It could be on the Gulf of Mexico where there are some troubles in terms of drilling rig apparatus or shipshape hauls that we have developed for the Terra Nova project. There is something we could do from a very task oriented perspective and leave it there, let it work and let it hammer it out. That is one initiative I would point out.
Second, he made a comment that Revenue Canada leasing regulations combined with accelerated depreciation could be a very expensive initiative. Given that there are no ships made today whatsoever using this formula, creating some economic activity and some tax revenue is certainly better than no tax revenue. I argue that we cannot afford not to do it. If we combine that with the fact there are social costs to the individuals who will be without work and whom we may actually have to support in a different initiative.
The wording we chose today is the exact wording tabled under the Liberal Party of Canada's policy initiative. I would be very surprised if there were not members on those backbenches and even in cabinet who supported that initiative. Why would the minister not support this initiative today?