Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you so much for being here today. It is really interesting to hear what you have to say.
This last little bit of discussion has been particularly interesting. As governments, we have choices that we have to make, just as your members do in terms of the investments they make, which I think one of you touched on in your opening statement.
There are several focuses of this government, not only on the industries and issues that you represent, but on the overall economy as well. We've made a fairly significant investment in science and technology. We have the science and technology strategy. We have the STIC council that, I think, is a big step forward. They came out with their report, which one of you referenced. There are significant dollars flowing within the infrastructure program to university infrastructure, and also to the Canada excellence research chairs, Vanier scholarships, and programs like those.
At the same time, we have a fiscal situation in this country that is really the envy of most industrialized countries in the world. We're the only G8 country that ran a surplus in each of the last three years; every one of the other G8 countries ran deficits in every one of those three years.
There's a lot of reference made to the American situation. I'm not sure if this is still a valid number, but I think the number that I've heard for the American deficit is $1.75 trillion. If you were to equate that in Canadian terms per capita, we'd be running a $175 billion deficit this year. Obviously we are substantially lower than that; I think $34 billion is the number that we're talking about in regard to our programs here.
Those types of things have led to some long-term stability, I think, for Canada moving forward, as we move through this situation that other countries don't have. We're able to move, for example, to get our corporate tax rate down to 15%. We've been talking about trying to get the overall tax rate down to 25% across the country, putting us in a much better position in terms of Canada's long-term benefit and ability to host successful, growing companies, and all of the high-paying jobs those companies offer, which we are in a much better position to do because of the many steps we're talking about.
Maybe you could again comment a little bit on the importance of that long-term stability. We've talked about the structural versus cyclical challenges, and both of the industries you represent are what I would characterize as structurally strong. Moving forward, there will be tremendous opportunities in both industries you're talking about.
How important is that stability here in Canada? How important is a favourable tax structure, keeping the taxes down generally and creating that competitive environment? And how important to your organizations are the changes we've made to the foreign investment and competition laws?