I'll give you a very straight number. The productivity of Canadian chemical industries is 30% better than those in the United States. We've done studies on that; we've worked with Industry Canada. That's a number we can verify.
We're a very small part of the global market, about 1.5% of the trillion-dollar chemical industry. The only reason we survive is because of a combination of good management and access to key resources, such as natural gas.
So every single day, our overall management structure--within the context of global companies--is making major decisions to adjust to all the challenges we face in the economy.
I'll give you a very slight example. We have pharma-chemical industries, which are pharma-based chemicals that go into drugs. When faced with a 22% appreciation in the dollar, meaning that one of our member companies essentially lost 22% of its revenue, because it sells 99% in the U.S. market, how did it adjust? The company quickly adjusted by outsourcing to India, because many of the base products can be produced there at one-fifth the cost.
So they're making those management decisions. Or they're working with Ireland. They're linking up to supply chains worldwide in order to be able to produce the product. If they hadn't done that, they wouldn't be in business today. It would have been very simple.
I don't know what government could last long if it lost 22% of its revenue in a year. It would be quite difficult.