Increasing the amount of credit for the purchase of a new vehicle is one of the things that should be looked at. If it's not done in the context of making sure the loans for those vehicles are very attractive, it is really a subsidy for the banks. They would be financing them by having a high-interest-rate loan that's different from the actual one out there. So that's one of the things I think we need to watch for.
I know you have negotiations taking place tomorrow. The minister has argued that the CAW has to agree to something similar to what has been done in the United States. With regard to what has been done for our banks, both in the United States and Canada, I find it interesting that there hasn't been the same scrutiny of workers. I haven't heard of a banker being made to take the wage of somebody working in Alabama. At the same time, we've asked the CAW and its workers to take a cut. It is really hard for a community. When you look at an economic stimulus package, there's the fact that even though we are rescuing the footprint of an industry that is so important to us, the input back into the economy is going to be less. I would argue that some of the slippage of sales we're seeing in Canada is also a result of 300,000 manufacturing jobs having disappeared over five years, which is significant, by all measures, for those who want to purchase a vehicle and change over old stock.
With regard to how you're going to approach the negotiations, what is considered comparable? Could you shed some light on that? There is a lot of discussion about Canada's health benefits, our taxation system, and all those things used to measure out the workers' wages so that they are comparable. There seems to be a lot of discrepancy.