Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for initiating this debate. It is one that has gone on in caucus circles for quite a while now. It has also gone on in departmental circles for quite a while now as well. This has not been precipitated just by the report of the finance committee but also by the fact that there is a deadline coming up on December 31.
I appreciate the fact that the member wishes to keep this focused on one item in the finance committee's report. The problem is that as soon as we unpack that little piece of duty remission, it then leads into other items such as tariffs, tariff relief programs and things of that nature because all of them exist in relation to each other.
Just to stay with the member's focus for a moment, if I may, I would like to ask him a series of questions that have been batted around, so to speak, by the minister and others, having to do what is the best thing to do here.
This is about a $30 million program, $30 million in duty remissions. It is an historical program. There is really no coherent reason why some people receive duty remissions and some people do not. One manufacturer on one side of the street gets duty remission and another manufacturer on the other side of the street does not. That is not a good way to focus a policy.
It is not particularly good, so the first question has to do with whether he would change the list of people who receive duty remission. Would he have a phase-out of the duty remission in some manner or another? If he did have a phase-out, would he replace it with some other form of program? Because the industry says it does not like the way the programs are working. I appreciate that the focus of the member's speech may well be good politics, but it is not necessarily good public policy.