Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I had a question for Mr. Busby, who is a policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute. Our committee has heard evidence since last week and there have been at least 20 or so hearings to date. It seems clear that temporary workers are not the magic solution. A number of witnesses criticized the exploitation of those people and talked about cases of abuse in the area of housing. We talked about potentially granting them citizenship. That's an issue.
Today we're hearing from people representing an economic institute that should provide us with an economic focus to assist us in resolving the situation. That may differ from other solutions considered. The solutions you're suggesting concern occupational training and labour mobility. I sincerely think that those solutions have already been implemented; they're not new. That's being done on a permanent basis and it hasn't solved the problem. That's why we resort to temporary workers.
Don't you think that Canada has a responsibility for economic fairness in the country. There's currently a degree of hyperactivity in one region, and that has resulted in an increase in the value of our dollar. This is causing problems in other regions, like the Quebec region, where we export a great deal. The turnover of a lot of medium-size businesses is declining because of this drop in exports, which in turn is due to the increase in our dollar, which in turn is caused by the situation prevailing in the west.
I would have liked you to make some economic recommendations to solve the problem. We're discussing temporary workers, but we won't find the solution that way. Don't you think the federal government should compensate those regions that are suffering as a result of other regions?