I tend to be an optimist when it comes to the ability of emerging technologies to let us all earn better livings in jobs that are safer, cleaner and more rewarding. I am fundamentally optimistic about that.
The trouble is that, when I look at Canada over the last number of years, I'm just not seeing the kind of investment performance here that we're seeing in the United States and in other OECD countries. When you compare investment per worker in Canada over the last few years to that in the United States and the OECD countries, we're falling behind. We had closed the gap with the United States considerably. We were never all the way there. They are a very high-investment economy.
In the middle of the last decade, we closed the gap entirely with the rest of the OECD, and lately it's off a lot. What's particularly concerning is that we're falling behind the United States most in the areas we would most like to see high investment rates in. You touched on the sectors. I'm not talking about the particular companies, but when it comes to machinery and equipment investment, the average Canadian worker is now getting less than 60¢ on the dollar per investment dollar enjoyed by the typical U.S. worker. The situation with respect to the OECD is a little better, but we're nowhere close to them.
When it comes to intellectual property products, which are software and the intangibles that a lot of us expect are really going to drive progress over the next little while, investment per worker in Canada is barely a quarter of what it is per worker in the United States. This is quite a recent development, so I'm encouraged when I hear—