Thank you.
I want to go to Mr. Cross for a moment.
Mr. Cross, I want to read something by.... I'm trying to figure out who the author was. I'll get it to you before we're done. It's Daniel Workman. He talks about—and I think it's extremely important, personally, and we may disagree on this—gauging exports on how the economy is doing.
Canada sold 596.9 billion dollars' worth of exported products in 2022. That's up 18.5% from $503.9 billion the year before. Even this week, I believe we came across the fact that manufacturing exports are up almost 1% in the month of March.
Of course, we know what our five biggest export products are. We've seen large investment in Volkswagen, obviously, just recently. Those are one of the top five exports. Crude oil is another one as are gold, automobile parts and accessories. Cars are a large investment that we just made. Parts and accessories are a large investment we just made. We know that we have a $3.8-billion strategy on critical minerals in 200 mines across the country. I think there are 60 different minerals that we're dealing with.
You look at larger businesses and larger corporations. Take the Irvings, for example, in my area. They farm. They own grocery stores. They own trucking companies. It's all inclusive. You start to see a growth sector. When you look at the investments that government has made over the past year in some of these sectors, would that not fit the bill to be more self-sufficient and more challenging, including the continued growth of our exports? That, to me, is a gauge that we need to follow relatively closely.
I'll take back the deficit—