There are a number of countries whose currency is pegged to the American dollar. China has done it with the yuan. There are small adjustments to be made, but I think that we could do the same with the Canadian dollar. We could allow 5% each side of a logical value for the Canadian dollar, that I would put around 80¢. Our dollar could go up or down by 5% depending on the time. I would find that acceptable.
You can attribute China's success to the fact that its currency is tied to the American dollar. Many other countries have done the same thing, like Saudi Arabia.
In our case, although a third of our gross national product is tied to the Americans and 85% of our exports go there, all we are doing today is resigning ourselves to becoming [Editorial Note: inaudible] because of the Americans. Actually, the Americans are importing Canadian industries to the United States, and ours are going bankrupt. In English, we would say:
they are beggaring us.
This is something that they were already talking about during the Great Depression in the 1930s. I think that the solution is either to adopt American currency for the entire continent or allow a 5% margin on either side of a value for our currency that would reflect the country's gross product compared in real terms to theirs.
However, what is happening today is that enormous tax revenues and profits are being lost. We are even selling oil at $50 instead of $95 today, if we compare it with the price five years ago.