Industry committee  Let me say one word and then I'll turn to Paul to talk about.... We have folks out there in the field who are talking to manufacturers and producers all the time. Let me make what I think is a very important point. Compared to our rigidity and lack of adjustment in the seventi

Industry committee  That is a very tough question.

Industry committee  I will begin with three points. First, we must not prevent the economy from adapting. It is extremely important to avoid preventing adjustments. Second, there have been problems for a long time with the availability of skilled labour and the mobility of skilled labour between se

Industry committee  Well, as I said before, we have only one tool and that is the setting of the overnight interest rate, and we've been doing that in such a way as to keep Canadian rates right across the curve. It's very important that it's not just the overnight rate, but it's right out to 10 year

Industry committee  After 2005, and especially over the past four to six weeks, there has been quite an extraordinary level of volatility in global financial and commodities markets. Paul.

Industry committee  It has caused real problems. It is hard to adjust very quickly to fairly brutal changes in relative prices. It is extremely difficult, and it is extraordinarily challenging.

Industry committee  One needs to be careful. In the manufacturing sector, for example, there are some subsectors working at full capacity, which have trouble keeping up with demand. I am referring especially to the processing sectors: steel, all metals, machinery, etc. For producers of consumer good

Industry committee  After a fairly difficult period in the 70s and 80s, we've learned that it is important to have an economy that is as flexible as possible. It is important for all governments, both provincial and federal, and for all regulatory boards to promote flexibility and labour mobility so

Industry committee  I don't want to tread on the Minister of Finance's territory. The one thing I would point out, however, is that the structure of the GST, being a value-added tax, is actually a good structure as far as the manufacturing sector is concerned. It would actually be very helpful in th

Industry committee  From early 2003 till late 2005, roughly speaking, the key factor was the increase in the price of natural gas, oil and base metals.

Industry committee  That's a domestic price. Here, in Canada, we don't have the capacity to produce enough gas to meet the demand. Black gold is the real problem. Prices escalated very quickly because overall demand has been very strong since 2003. Those are the major factors, but the demand in the

Industry committee  Let me start with interest rates, because that's what we directly influence. As you are aware, we have interest rates across the whole spectrum of the yield curve at almost historic lows. Indeed, we haven't seen rates this low since the 1950s. In part, those low rates are facil

Industry committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a tremendous pleasure for Paul and me to be here this morning and to meet with you. It really is an honour to be invited, and I hope we can be of some help to you in your examination of the challenges facing the Canadian manufacturing sec