I appreciate the question.
My best defence, of course, is this is StatsCan data, using the input-output data as the basis of setting up the NAICS codes. The NAICS is the North American Industrial Classification System, which chops up the Canadian economy into all of the different sectors and subsectors and industries and so forth. This is not my data. This is StatsCan's data. That's point one.
Here is point two. I hope nobody's eyes glaze over at this word “methodological”, but you did raise an important methodological question. If you're in a high-rise tower in downtown Calgary working for an oil company, are you classified in the oil sector, or are you classified in the services sector?
My understanding, and I'm not a statistician at StatsCan, is that if you are working for an oil company with an NAICS code for oil and gas, every last one of you, even if you're a finance accountant in that company, is classified in oil and gas.
It's just like General Motors is in manufacturing. Even though many people might be in marketing or sales rather than on the production line, they're still considered manufacturers.
To answer your question, and to come back to you, the StatsCan data show that 370,000 Canadians, a third of one million, are all employed in upstream areas. That's timber, that's all natural resources, molybdenum, gold mining, the whole bit.
I'm not suggesting that there aren't spinoffs downstream. If you want the full figure, natural resources is 12% of GDP, but remember that 80% of Canada's GDP is in the downstream services sector—banks, education, health care, and so on.