Let me go more to a big picture, because I'm worried about this, as I've already mentioned in my opening comments. Nobody is talking about it in this country hardly at all, except David Dodge, I think, and a few other people like that.
We are seeing a decline in business capital expenditures. People's eyes glaze over and they say, “Capex, what's that?”
Philip Cross, a very senior distinguished economist for 35 years with StatsCan, came to my class just before the pandemic, and he put it really nicely. I've been using it in my class ever since: If you want to know what any economy in the world is going to look like in three, four or five years, look at total aggregate business investment today; if it's going down, your economy is going to look pretty shabby in three, four or five years.
Why? It's because business capital investment is the plant and equipment and the machinery that produces the growth, the revenues and the sales of every business in the economy. It is not just another investment; it is absolutely crucial to the prosperity and the standard of living of any country, anywhere—and our business capital investment is going down.
Now, to your question, if we start threatening companies, it doesn't matter what the motive or the reason is. We can have the best motives of all, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. My point is that all we're doing is putting a target on us by saying, “Foreign capital or FDI, whether it's foreign direct investment around the world or domestic capital, we're not very friendly to you.” We're putting a target on us and saying: “Don't invest here. The United States is much more friendly and Europe is more friendly. Go there. Don't come here.” That's the last message on earth that we want to send to investment, because investment is mobile. We cannot compel investors with money to invest in Canada. They have choices.
That's my reaction to that.