Madam Speaker, that was an interesting presentation by the member. I am disappointed that he would choose to target Alberta in his remarks because I do not think the adjustment in the corporate tax rate was intended to benefit Alberta's industries any more than all Canadian industries.
As he pointed out, the resource depletion allowance was intended to be a direct compensation for the payment of resource royalties to the provinces. To now drop that 25% resource depletion allowance and replace it with a direct deduction for the actual amount of royalties paid to the provinces seems to me to be the only fair way to deal with the issue.
Certainly there are some distortions in the system with some of the mining companies when we take that into consideration but I would suggest that if we are going to start examining those distortions with a microscope we should also look at how the receiving of equalization payments affects the royalties that provinces chose to charge their resource development companies. I would suggest there is a distortion there as well because certainly for every dollar increase in resource royalties that a province charges a company that develops that resource, it means a reduction in a dollar of equalization.
I would suggest that it has had an effect over the years in the resource royalty income of the provinces from those resource developments.
It is a complex issue but I would urge the member to consider the fairness and instead of an arbitrary allowance for the payment of those resource royalties that the actual deduction is a much fairer system. I would not argue with the member that we still need to look at fiscal instruments in a number of resource sectors that will help make them competitive globally and help them to develop, to be successful, to create jobs and to pay money into the provincial coffers.
However I would express my disappointment that the member would single out some provinces being favoured by Ottawa and some not. I do not think that it is fair nor do I think it is the intention of the legislation. Quite frankly, I think it is a bit petty.