Mr. Speaker, the only caveat I would put to his question is that there are many Canadian companies, from IT to the automotive sector and others, that do not enjoy this subsidy. That is what it is, because the cost of carrying insurance is a cost of doing business. If companies lower the amount of insurance they have to carry, they lower the cost of doing business. If somebody else is picking that cost up and it is the public, that is a public subsidy. I can hear Mr. Hudak screaming in the rafters now, “No more corporate welfare”.
Conservatives are so often very comfortable with the idea of corporate subsidies, particularly for corporations that do not need it because they have such an enormous amount of wealth. Oil is $105 a barrel. They are pulling it out of the ground. They are making the money.
If they are taking those risks and enjoying that profit, then certainly they should assume that risk and not spread it out among the hard-working Canadians who had nothing to do with the accidents that those oil companies created.