Madam Speaker, I must say that I am a little surprised to hear the comments from my colleagues in the New Democratic Party caucus and to hear their expressions of virulent opposition to this bill.
I can assure hon. members that the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the resource sector, the working people, and the people the NDP always talk about, will benefit from this bill. They are employed and have good lifetime jobs because of the resource sector, including people who live in my constituency.
One of the reasons why the New Democratic Party has increasingly fallen out of favour with its traditional constituency, and one of the reasons it has half the support it did historically, is because when it comes to issues like this, it is constantly against the job creators who employ the working families on whose behalf it claims to speak.
I find it interesting that the NDP government in Saskatchewan, which yesterday called an election, strongly supports the equalization of taxation for the resource sector because the Saskatchewan treasury, economy, and working families depend on that industry. Tens of thousands of jobs in Saskatchewan are dependent on the oil and gas companies, these evil, profitable companies that take risks, invest capital, use technology and ingenuity to help extract resources in an environmentally friendly way, and create wealth in the process.
Why is it that the NDP here is stalling this bill, by voting against this bill, while the NDP in Saskatchewan, now facing an election, would like to see it passed in order to equalize tax treatment and not have two tier tax discrimination against the people who work in the resource sector and keep this economy going?