Industry committee  If I may, I hope I didn't give the impression that we would favour targeting industrial policy to particular companies or sectors. I think the most effective approach from a policy point of view is to create the right conditions to make Canada a great place in which to do business and from which to do business globally.

Industry committee  Shall I start? Okay. With regard to the first question, particularly if our major market in the United States goes into recession, that will affect more than just the sectors--forestry, for instance--that are bearing the brunt on the front end, because it's the housing crisis in the United States that's the leading edge of economic weakness there.

Industry committee  I can perhaps just add a couple of comments on the environmental aspect of that. First of all, it's important to recognize that when we talk about research, it's really the broader process of innovation. It's not just finding new discoveries, new ideas; it's actually putting them into place.

Industry committee  Well, your question was, do I anticipate any impact on Canada's delivery of things such as health care, water and sewage, or other publicly delivered services, and I'm saying no.

Industry committee  The basic principle of any trade agreement has been national treatment. You can't discriminate against companies depending on where they come from. That's all it says. Of course, Ambassador Marchi is much better equipped to deal with the technicalities of that.

Industry committee  The short answer is that I don't expect anything in any trade agreement—bilateral, regional, or multilateral—to affect the ability of Canadian governments to deliver publicly whatever services they wish. The only impact it has is on whether private companies have to be treated the same, whether they're domestic or foreign, if things are done as a private sector activity.

Industry committee  Perhaps I can address two points. I would agree with you, and certainly one of the questions we are trying to dig deeper into is what really matters if we want businesses to invest more in research and development. The initial stage of the project we've done with Industry Canada suggests that there may be broad policies that would help to encourage more investment across the board.

Industry committee  All right. Perhaps I can start then. In terms of the international arena, we have to be aware that for services, on the one hand, it's been harder to get international agreements in terms of opening up market access and so on. On the other hand, it's also an area in which trade rules can sometimes be difficult.

Industry committee  I think on the government side, what it indicates is that we need to focus in two areas. First of all, we have to do everything we can to enable every single Canadian to achieve his or her full potential, and that takes us into areas like education, like training, issues that are not just federal in jurisdiction but that are a national problem.

Industry committee  Well, I think on the corporate side the market has its impact. The fact is, as labour becomes harder to find, as you can't find the people with the skills you need, you do whatever you have to do in order to recruit the people you need to train them. So as we move into a chronically labour-short economy, you're going to see business investment on the training side, in particular, increase correspondingly.

Industry committee  I think that does actually conclude my remarks, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to appear this morning. When we talk about the service sector, we're covering a vast range of work, three-quarters of the jobs in the economy. With your permission, I'm going to focus my initial remarks on two areas in which we've done specific research into what it takes to compete for highly skilled and well-paid work, two specific kinds of service jobs, if I can put it that way: those involved in head offices and those involved in research and development.

Finance committee  We've always been willing to look at the costs and benefits of that strategy. On balance, we have in the past believed, and we continue to believe, that adopting the current currency or adopting the U.S. dollar would not be in Canada's interests. Frankly, there are two options Mr.

Finance committee  If I may, perhaps I'll address both halves of that. First of all, obviously it is not the role of the Government of Canada to tell the Bank of Canada what to do. So what the government can do is not on the monetary policy side; it's on the fiscal policy side. I believe the government has all sorts of levers, not to change the value of the dollar necessarily but to enable companies to cope with that and to ensure that companies are able to continue to maintain and to build jobs in Canadian communities despite whatever value the dollar may achieve from one day to the next and from one year to the next.

Finance committee  This is a subject that our membership has given a great deal of attention to over the last six months in particular, and a couple of months ago we brought out a set of principles that essentially laid out what we thought was a path forward, a framework if you want, that would enable us to make effective progress as a country on the climate change challenge while also moving us forward as an economy, rather than adding to the problems of growth.