Thank you, and good afternoon everybody.
Mr. Kingston, welcome.
Welcome to everyone, but let me start with Mr. Kingston.
You laid out your four points on what the Business Council would like to see our government move forward on, and I can check off all four points.
You look at our infrastructure plan from our platform, and you see $120 billion over 10 years. You look at trade liberalization, and you see our work to complete the CETA. There was our recent agreement with the Chinese government on canola. I think we need to highlight that. You look at what we're doing on our innovation agenda. On comprehensive tax reform, there is the removal of inefficient tax credits and the working group on that. I say to myself, well, I think we're on the right track.
I definitely think we're on the right track. We're facing a lot of headwinds globally that are impacting the Canadian economy, but our platform and our policies are the right things. Even our investment infrastructure to run moderate deficits over a short- to medium-term period of three to five years and then to get back into balance is exactly what is being called for by the OECD, by Christine Lagarde, by Bank of Canada governors—past and present and future, whenever that happens—by former federal reserve chairpersons. I think we are definitely on the right track.
There's one thing you didn't mention, which I'd like to hear from you about, and also from the Restaurant Association and the CFIB. It is on the issue of labour, skilled labour and unskilled labour. We had StatsCan this week report that the Canadian population grew by the most...both on an absolute level and percentage basis in over a decade.
What are we missing in terms of the labour component to be sure that we have the labour force ready to take those jobs and move our economy forward?