Mr. Speaker, if the member is talking about some sort of fiscal balance or an approach that is striking balance within the economy, why has the government chosen to continue with a subsidy to the most profitable part of the economy, the oil sands? There is a $1.3 billion or $1.4 billion subsidy that will continue this year, next year and into the year after that, going to a part of the economy which is making absolute record profits with the price of oil being at an all-time high.
This does not make any fiscal sense nor is it prudent at all when other sectors of the economy are struggling just to keep their doors open. There was another announcement from GM today. The government, in a sense, is regionalizing the country. It is breaking it into its component parts rather than maintaining a cohesive unit where various components of the country's economy are presented as a unified force rather than advancing certain interests that are narrowly geographically defined.
How is it that the member's government continues to justify an obscene and perverse subsidy to an industry that does not need it and has not asked for it? Certainly the money could be used much better in other places, whether it be the auto sector, the wood manufacturing sector, just about any other manufacturing sector within our economy, rather than in companies that simply are making profits that were unimaginable in previous economies.