I would say that we can encapsulate our approach to industry building in the auto sector, probably since the late 1990s, when the former 1965 Auto Pact was dismantled. That was an interesting trade agreement we had. It was the only trade agreement of its kind that actually mandated investments coming into Canada. If there were transformations, changes and technological developments in the industry, we would naturally be on the cusp of that. Because we live right beside the U.S., that's the market we mostly sell to, so whether we liked it or not, we would have auto investment coming in.
This is not the case today. It's seems that we've been more inclined to sit back and try to engage in a much more laissez-faire approach to how the auto industry was going to evolve. We've seen that not work out too well. We've seen us go from the fifth-largest automaker in the world to now somewhere around 12th. We've seen production decline by 40%, and we've seen jobs decimated across communities.
In place of a structure like the Auto Pact, we need to contemplate other policy ideas that go beyond just having a bucket of money at the ready. It's very important to be playing a role, but it needs more. In some of the cases I have listed, we can go through a whole series of policy ideas about how we can be more engaged—as a government, interconnected with provincial governments, and so forth.