I wrote a paper last summer for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, which I'm representing today, that talked about innovation. We've had programs to stimulate productivity and innovation in this country for decades. We have government programs all over the place. They just haven't worked. We have to get away from this mentality that if we fiddle with the inputs of innovation, or the presumed inputs of innovation, like research and development and education and so on, that we'll fix innovation. That's not working. We have to get back to how we encourage an entrepreneurial mindset in this country.
We've heard a lot of talk today about how somehow being wealthy is almost a crime in this country. It's something we should penalize. If somebody becomes rich, we immediately should increase taxes on them. Why don't we celebrate these people? Why don't we ask them: What is it that you did right that the rest of us can learn from?
That's much more the mentality you see in the U.S., and guess what. Guess who's the number one most innovative country in the world by far. It's our neighbours to the south, but we denigrate them. I just don't get it.