International Trade committee  —integrated, complex supply chain. If you try to take that apart now, it will disadvantage all of North America.

International Trade committee  Our industry is highly interconnected. It's a global industry—similar companies in all jurisdictions—so it was relatively easy. We're in regular contact, I would say daily contact, with our counterparts in those jurisdictions. We facilitated the availability of Canada's trade councillors to meet privately with our counterparts in the U.S. to get their perspectives: why would they have the same position we do?

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair. It is an honour to meet with this committee. As you know, international trade has certainly moved to the forefront of both policy-makers' and the business community's minds. Just for some background, the chemistry industry is a vital component of the Canadian economy.

Industry committee  And municipal governments—

Industry committee  Funnily enough, if you listen to our critics who have also appeared before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, their message is that Canada's laws aren't nearly tough enough and that the Americans outperform us even in places like Louisiana and Texas.

Industry committee  Yes, as could other information we have that would be similar.

Industry committee  It is a fiscal tool. I think that's the important thing here. As a country and in our other jurisdictions, Canada has taken certain tools off the table that no one else has taken off the table. We're not saying to put in place tools that you don't want to use. We're realists here—

Industry committee  Yes. We're suggesting a straight 100% writeoff as a temporary measure over the life of a business investment of perhaps five to 10 years. In our best estimate, which we can provide to you and which will be in our submission, if you took a typical $2 billion investment, yes, the federal government would forgo revenues, but one thing to remember is that those revenues would never appear if the investment hadn't been made in the first place.

Industry committee  This is a straight 100% depreciation right up front. For a $2 billion investment, you're looking at about half, $1 billion of that, the year it comes in.

Industry committee  In the year it comes in. For a $2 billion investment, we're suggesting, based on our previous analysis, that about half of that, or $1 billion, would be eligible for that treatment. If we look at what the incremental taxable profits would be once an operation starts up, in year four or year five...we're suggesting a break-even point for that would be about eight years.

Industry committee  I think it's been a long time since Canada has provided direct tax relief or tax holidays to manufacturers at the provincial or municipal level. It's not in our makeup to do that, and I'm not saying we should. I'm just saying that's what the competitors do. We have to pay attention to that and make sure that whatever we come up with is going to be competitive from an investment standpoint.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  We don't know which ones we've lost. We know which ones we haven't won.

Industry committee  In broad terms, there will be project-specific arrangements made that are not always public detail. We are involved in a study right now with the the Canadian Energy Research Institute and Natural Resources Canada that will benchmark Alberta, Ontario, and Canada's investment regime versus that of key U.S. jurisdictions.

Industry committee  I think the draft is ready now and will be released this week in Alberta.