Thank you, Chair, and also welcome. It's always a pleasure to have you here. It's always a great session.
I'd really like to focus on the area of business investment. Certainly, that's been critical for our sustained economic recovery, so it was with great interest that I noted in your October monetary policy report business fixed investments continued to recover strongly in the second quarter. That certainly seems like a very good sign. There are links with the trade issue as I look at my riding, where a mill that was shut down then invested $25 million and now has many products going over to China. So there is some good news.
If you look at John Manley with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, he has said that 50 companies, in responding to a council survey, indicated they “plan[ned] to invest close to $110 billion between now and 2013." To put that in context, that's twice what the federal and provincial government combined spent on stimulus during the recession. So this is important, and this is why our argument is that governments don't need to go out and sprinkle fairy dust all over the country. They should get their fiscal situations in order, as the private sector will take up that slack. That's where we're going to grow out of this.
So I'd like you to speak to what you've seen with regard to business investment in the economy in Canada, and what trends you anticipate going forward. How important is increased private sector business investment for Canada's sustained economic recovery?