Small steps

It's certainly a plus to note that the House of Commons Natural Resources Committee is recommending the elimination of federal tax breaks for oil and gas companies:

The Conservative government should scrap the generous tax breaks for the oil sands that some say are worth hundreds of millions annually, recommends a draft report by the Commons natural resources committee.

The report has been debated for weeks behind closed doors as MPs from the four parties in the House wrestled with the politically thorny issue of federal policy on Alberta's oil sands...

The Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental group, has estimated that federal tax breaks for Canada's oil and gas industry are worth $1.4-billion a year. The institute has said the oil sands receive a significant share of those tax breaks but exact figures are impossible to find...

The report is complete and was scheduled for release yesterday, but that was pushed back by last-minute calls from the Conservatives and NDP MPs on the committee for a delay so that each party could write supplementary reports. The Conservatives are expected to disagree with some of the recommendations; the NDP is expected to say some do not go far enough.

While the report is a start, though, it's worth noting that merely eliminating tax breaks for oil and gas is only one relatively minor step toward the ultimate goal of encouraging more environmentally-responsible resource management. And hopefully the committee reviewing Bill C-30 will be able to agree on much more than just the tax break elimination to get Canada headed in the right direction.