That's a great question, and thanks for asking it. I could spend all afternoon responding to it, but I'll just take about two minutes.
There are a couple of things. In automotive investment, for example, we've lost arguably tens of billions of dollars in investment in the auto sector to the southern United States and Mexico. The cost of doing business is one of the reasons, along with the permitting time in the different levels of government. It could take three or four years for something to go through here in Canada. Down in the southern United States and Mexico, it can go much more quickly.
It's an attitude adjustment that has to happen. We have to compete for business. We have to say to people “Hey, do you want to spend money and employ people here in Canada, here in Ontario? We're going to make it fast for you. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to fast-track this, we're going to have concierge service, and we're going to get this department involved and that department involved.” For example, in Mexico it's one-stop shopping. We've been arguing for that here in Canada.
When a large company wants to invest here in Canada, instead of shuffling them off to different departments—I know that's the way things are done in Ottawa, since I've been through it a number of times—we have to have the attitude of how to make it happen in the quickest amount of time to get it done. We could be more competitive. If we cut our time in lending investment from where it is now to where it should be in line with the southern United States, Mexico, and even the Midwest, we'd be in a far better place.
The top of the list is a concierge service. Second is a change of attitude in the administration so that private sector investment is to be heralded and welcomed and should be done as quickly as possible. It shouldn't be, “Here's what the problems are, and here's what our department's answers are.” We should give civil servants targets in terms of how quickly they're driving the permit process through. We should be coordinating with the federal and provincial offices to get things done, and they should be held accountable for targets, jobs created, and speed of permitting. That goes to the local level, too. We've talked about that here at the Windsor-Essex chamber with our local folks here.