As you said, there is no simple answer. I don't quite agree with some of the things you just said, Mr. Chair, about the investment part and the productivity record. If you go back to the period of 1989 to 1999, we had a terrible record of productivity, absolutely horrible. We were one of the lowest in the OECD. It did improve after 2000, so I would argue that the number of things we've done, including corporate tax reform...that wasn't just reducing rates, it was also doing other things. One's very helpful in attracting investment. Our investment rates and our productivity improved. It improved also for other reasons. I won't say it was just the corporate tax, but studies have shown that the corporate tax helped. There's no question about that.
The only question that I have, which has been a constant issue that has plagued everybody, is why Canada can't seem to get its productivity rate much better than, let's say, 1.5% per year. It was 1.5% through some of the post-2010s for a certain period, but it has been really laggy. People keep looking for answers, and so one view is that maybe we need moon shots.
Now we've got the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and we have superclusters. I will guarantee you, and I may not be living then, but in 15 years we will still be talking about 1% productivity rates because we still haven't got to the fundamental problem of why we can't improve our productivity. I think we're thinking too much about looking at certain little things to improve our productivity when there's something much bigger. I think some of it is simply not enough competitive pressure on our businesses to be more innovative. That's because we've done a great job protecting many businesses from competition. That's one hypothesis I have.
I may be totally wrong but I have a bit of a view of these issues from the past, and I see a lot of protected sectors in our economy.