I'm not an expert on research and development, but I'll try to address your question. Perhaps members of our coalition can supplement after this presentation and give you further information.
I can speak on behalf of my own industry, where our research and development is quite often done on a cooperative basis with the government, with the Department of Agriculture, where we do fund research and development quite significantly. We have a global institute, an international plant nutrition institute, which our industry members fund. It does do agricultural research on a global basis. The Canadian members of that organization put in several million dollars a year in R and D.
I want to take a bit of a different tack. I think the business coalition has very much recognized the moves that governments have made over the last few years in terms of addressing capital taxes and addressing corporate income taxes. We've talked about tax gaps. We've talked about the need to foster investment in Canada. Jay Myers from Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters appeared before this committee recently, and he talked about the fact that investment in Canada has actually declined 5%, if you include depreciation and inflation adjustment, since 2000.
As one of the manufacturing industries in Canada, I can say that we are facing a rising Canadian dollar and high energy costs, and we have to fight for investment with other parts of the world.