Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.
Thank you, Governor.
First, like my colleagues, I would like to thank you for your years of public service, at least as far as I know, in the Department of Finance, the Department of Health, and then as Governor of the Bank of Canada. You've given a great deal of your life to this country, and we thank you for that and wish you well in your retirement.
Having said all those nice things, I want to question you where I actually first started questioning you when I became the finance critic and you were at committee. And that has to do with the failure of you and your office to really address the crisis in manufacturing.
You continually talk about Canada operating above capacity, or at full capacity, without acknowledging or addressing the fact that the bottom half of Canadians haven't seen any change in their wages. We also have this serious crisis in jobs in the manufacturing sector, with, obviously, the rise in the Canadian dollar--again today--hurting rather than helping that situation.
I think the fact that we've lost one in ten manufacturing jobs in the last seven or eight years, that we've lost good-paying jobs, and that we have many people struggling to make ends meet and not seeing much hope for the future is something we have to constantly focus on. I think that is something you could address as Governor of the Bank of Canada.
I'd like to hear from you if there are some parts of monetary policy that could actually address these concerns.