Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank all of you for your presentations.
We're very excited about being here. Most of us don't get here very often. We had a little technical difficulty getting here, so we're glad we made it.
I want to start with the board of trade.
Professor Martin, who is the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, commented just today on the study by the World Economic Forum, which showed that since 1998 Canada has slipped in its global competitiveness rating from 6th to 11th. There is concern about our drifting down in these rankings.
I wonder if you could give the committee your perspective on how we can reverse that and thereby give our citizens a higher standard of living and more ability to afford some of the programs we're hearing about from other presenters.