Madam Speaker, there are two copper mines in my area and I support what they do. They do it with excellence and they also bring money into Canada that would not normally be here with respect to investment and ongoing resource development. That is really important.
Before we talk about extending certain tax treatment, the same that is being done right now with electric vehicles, the government said that for three years, $100 million a year would go toward subsidizing companies that switched to electric car. First, we do not have a business case. The Liberals have spent 80% of that budget in one year. We know the adoption of it is up, but are we taking vehicles off the road or are we giving wealthy Canadian families a third or fourth vehicle to trot around in, while still having other cars burning other sources of fuel? Is there a valid business case? Are we seeing people removing a combustion engine from the road and going to an electric vehicle? We should not just be subsidizing rich people.
We could go toward a lot of priorities, but any recovery effort we make should be as broad as possible and we should always remember it is the taxpayers who want to see good value for money. We should not just jump to the next stage without considering if we are doing well with the programs we already have.