Madam Speaker, of course I agree that we ought to subsidize the things that we want, which are cleaner technologies, and not subsidize the things we do not want, which are technologies that hurt the environment. However, I want to be clear that when the oil and gas sector or other industries can move the needle on reducing emissions, there are opportunities potentially to offer incentives for them to reduce emissions if they otherwise would not. Really what we should be looking at is the dollar cost for emissions reductions and where the efficiencies might be.
On the Trans Mountain pipeline specifically, I always understood that the bulk of the profits, to the extent we see them, occurs when the project is completed, because that is when the capacity is able to increase and we will see more revenue generated in our economy and more tax revenue certainly.
Let me just note that the supply-side measures are incredibly hard to accomplish when there are not alternatives in the marketplace. Phasing out coal-fired electricity makes a good deal of sense because there are alternatives and we can see emissions reductions.
However, in taking a supply-side measure on oil and gas today in Canada, what is going to happen is we are going to see the same global demand. Global supply is more than sufficient to meet that global demand, and we will have frittered away industry in Canada and not made a difference at all to tackle the overall picture of global climate change. Therefore, we have to be very careful about supply-side measures and blocking projects in Canada without considering the impacts around the world.