I think I was basically just responding to this attitude that because of the dramatic growth of oil sands output in this industry generally over the last decade, that somehow we've become a petrostate. I'd very much agree. I remember back in the fall, Jack Mintz was asked if the Canadian dollar was a petrocurrency. I thought he gave a very good response. He said that if it is, it isn't a very good one. If we're a petrostate, we're not a very good one.
We're not. Yes, petroleum grew rapidly and the resource sector generally grew. What people don't remember is how much that industry shrank during the 1990s. To me, a lot of this growth of resources was simply getting back to the kind of balanced economy between resources and manufacturing that traditionally has underpinned prosperity in Canada. I thought it was dangerous to become overly reliant on a low dollar and manufacturing for growth, and I think that was borne out by, first, the ICT bust in 2000, and then the ongoing troubles in textiles and forestry-based manufacturing.
I think we've seen an appropriate rebalancing away from manufacturing and back to resources. I don't think we're overly dependent on resources. Manufacturing is still a much bigger industry than the resource sector. I think people should keep that in mind. We're not Alberta, which does have an outside dependence on the resource sector.