Business investment and productivity growth are very strongly correlated. If you look over time or across countries, you see that in countries where productivity growth is rapid, business investment is high, and in countries where productivity growth is slow, business investment is low. There are both cause and effect at work there. Businesses will invest more if the opportunities appear greater, and then putting new tools in the hands of workers—the most up-to-date software, the most up-to-date machinery—helps workers to be more productive.
You can argue the cause and effect side of it, and people do, but at the moment I'm seeing very low investment rates in Canada as a sign of concern. I mentioned that the capital stock per worker is dropping. That has never happened before over a period of years the way that it has lately, and that makes me concerned about future productivity growth and future income growth, including the incomes we'll need to get our fiscal house back in order.
At the moment, since we're talking about inflation, the concern is just that the supply side of the economy is now growing very rapidly, so as we're stimulating demand, we're getting more inflation than we want and not as much real growth as we want.