That's a very good question.
In my view, the issue of how we recapitalize our banks and deal with the very issue that's started today, the stress-testing of financial institutions of the larger than $100 billion size, is of critical importance. You have to think of the financial system as getting it whole, as getting the blood flowing again in the arteries so that the parts of the body can come back to life. This is the problem that has to be dealt with, and it is being dealt with. I predict that it will not be easy to deal with, but it will be dealt with.
The greatest menace facing us all, which may sink us all, is protectionism. I acknowledge to every member of this committee that protectionism is a very human thing. When people are out of jobs and you see unemployment spiking and businesses being lost and shutting down, people become very afraid. When taxpayers' money in large quantities is being used to bail out industries or when responsibility for those tax dollars is being taken onto the shoulders of the government, then I think it's very, very important that when individuals say, “Look, if it's my taxpayer money that's going to be used to bail out industry X, I don't want industry X sourcing in Canada or sourcing in Mexico”, we have to speak out strongly against that, especially in the case of Canada and the United States. In the case of Canada and the United States, the level of integration is so high that by insisting you shut out Canada in industry X, Y or Z, ultimately you'll be shooting yourself in the foot.
I know that's raised this issue: what if the United States, under its reconstruction and recovery act, were to offer Canada a waiver? In principle, we should be opposed to any form of protectionism. If we accept the waiver, which some people argue would be in our national interest to do, because much of that money is being spent at the state level, I would say that we would be compromising our principles. Either you're for protectionism or you're against it. I think we have to be against it. It has to begin up here. That's why I was so very pleased to see President Obama and Prime Minister Harper speaking out against it.
The G20 leaders met in Washington last November. What did they promise? They promised they would try to fix the system and they also promised that they would resist any new form of protectionism. They were hardly home, in some cases, when they started endorsing protectionist actions. These have to be resisted. It requires political courage. It's not easy. We acknowledge that.
Then, on the way down, we have to say what we all say within our own councils: don't go to Ottawa, don't go to Quebec City, and don't go to Queen's Park and say, “Protect me, but at the same time keep everybody else out.” The moment you start to do that, you're on the slippery slope.
This has to be done at the very top, but I think it has to be said again and again. When these buffoons like Lou Dobbs get on CNN every night, throwing out all of this stuff about jobs being lost, suggesting that most of them are being lost to Mexico when in fact they're being lost to China or elsewhere, it's people like that who have to be rebutted. Frankly, we've been concerned that at the political level, not to mention the business leaders level, we haven't been nearly strong enough at rebutting the assumption that somehow protectionism will save us.
Here's one little statistic. Maybe you've heard it and maybe you haven't. When the Smoot-Hawley act was introduced and tariffs were put on 22,000 items in the United States, within an 18-month period the total amount of world trade had dropped by two-thirds. We don't need any lessons from the past to teach us how dangerous protectionism is.