Madam Speaker, I have done my homework and I have plowed through every line of the budget hoping to find some hope. I have not found it. Apart from the fact that the budget mostly talks about what the government did last year and does not give a lot of detail on what it will do this year, it also makes it clear what it is cutting.
If the government were truly committed to helping homeowners reduce their energy costs and reduce the need for building big, dirty generation facilities, it would extend that program over many years. I think it would get lots of letters of support from homeowners in Canada. If it really cared about small business, why not extend that program to small businesses? They need the savings right now, when they are suffering in the recession.
How can the member claim that the clean energy fund is working toward clean electricity, when the only thing it is financing is the subsidization of the coal fire power industry and two oil and gas companies to test one technology? Not a cent of that fund is going into really investing in renewable power. As a result, I am told by the sector that the investment is all going south, with the exception that some provinces have taken the initiative the government has not taken to genuinely give incentives for moving toward cleaner electricity generation.
For the forestry sector and pulp and paper, we absolutely need to give them incentives, including incentives to go to cogeneration. However, the member should check into the litigation going on in Alberta right now. The industry that has tried to move to cogeneration and would like to tie into the grid cannot compete with coal-fired power on the spot market.
I would encourage the member to examine in more detail the way the deregulated electricity regime is run in Alberta. It is not a fair game, and there needs to be a lot more federal support going in. We need to talk to the provincial government to get them on board on this agenda.
I would add to that the cutting—