Canada. Petroleum Incentives Administration : The Petroleum Incentives Administration (PIA) was responsible for the administration of both the Petroleum Incentives Program Act and the Canadian Ownership and Control Determination Act, acts that were proclaimed in June and September, 1982, respectively. Under the terms of the Acts, the administration was broadly responsible for the collection, analysis and study of information pertaining to the determination of companies' and individuals' Canadian ownership rate and control status, and their eligibility for reimbursement of certain approved expenditures, as well as the development of policy and regulations. At the same time, PIA worked closely with a variety of other government departments and agencies in an effort to meet its legislated mandates. PIA obtained technical advice from and provided certification of Canadian ownership rates to the Canadian Oil and Gas Lands Administration; Revenue Canada and the Department of Finance were consulted as part of an effort to ensure that tax regulations were consistently applied; the Foreign Investment Review Agency provided advice and experience to PIA officers and ensured that control determination standards were consistent in terms of their application by both PIA and FIRA; the Department of Justice provided legal advice to PIA; and finally, PIA maintained a close liaison with the Alberta Petroleum Incentives Program so that the two programmes would be uniformly administered (Canada, Energy, Mines and Resources Canada, Petroleum Incentives Administration Report, 1 January 1981 to 31 December 1983, p. 9.). With the signing of the Western Accord in March 1989, both the PIP and the COCD programmes were scheduled to be phased out between 1988 and 1989. While the two programmes, COCD and PIP, were related administratively and operationally, each sub-programme created and maintained its own records office.
The NEP was established in 1980 and featured a number of programmes, activities and administrations that were designed to create a national energy policy framework for the 1980s and beyond. The NEP featured a three-pronged set of broad objectives that included the attainment of a secure supply of energy and energy independence for Canada, the creation of a series of opportunities for Canadians to participate in energy industries in Canada, and an attempt to fairly price and share the energy revenues between various levels of government and industry, and for all Canadians regardless of where they lived. Within this broad and ambitious framework, PIA was specifically designed to address the problem of a secure and independent energy supply by encouraging the development of Canadian oil and gas resources and to increase the level of participation by Canadians in the petroleum exploration and development industry. The NEP, and the PIP played an absolutely critical role within this larger package, and represented the greatest degree of intervention on the part of the federal government as an active participant in the Canadian economy since the Second World War. Some recent analysts in fact, have argued that the NEP may have been the engine of the federal government economic development package for the early-1980s. Archival Appraisal GAD File No. 9465-50/E7
