Well, there is a host of policies that need to be put in place to enhance productivity in this country, and they're required from both the federal and provincial levels of government.
I would say, on the whole, over the course of many years successive governments have put in place a number of the factors that should bring about an increase in productivity. Those include, first and foremost, having our macroeconomic policies in order; sustainable public finances; inflation under control; competitive taxation, both on a corporate and a personal level; liberalizing tariffs to enhance competition; measures to enhance research and development; and then very importantly, a series of investments in human capital, particularly at the university level, so we have the people to help drive productivity.
But we still have a productivity issue in this country, without question. Our overall level of productivity is about 80% of the United States levels.
Importantly, there is a chart in here—I believe it's chart 15 or so—that shows unit labour costs in Canada versus the United States over the course of the last decade. The bottom line of that is Canadian unit labour costs have gone up 80% since 2002. The U.S. unit labour costs measured in the same currency have gone up 10%. So that gap is just one measure of the loss of competitiveness of our industry. So more needs to be done.
It's a bit more of the same, I would say, on the government side. And I don't want to be too prescriptive, obviously, to you on these measures.
But also very importantly, Canadian business needs to invest; it needs to take advantage of the financial system that's functioning; and it needs to take advantage of opportunities that exist in emerging markets. We have just started to see that rebound in investment.
And I'll make one last point. We've also noted in here the level of investment in this recovery versus previous recoveries is surprisingly weak. In fact investment is only about 15% of the level it would normally be at this stage in the recovery. So that has started to turn around, but it needs to continue, as I indicated earlier in my remarks.