I think the impact on production and employment lies ahead, and I think for the rest of this year it's going to be a very challenging period of time for manufacturing. I hope the worst is behind us in terms of the downturn in orders, but the adjustment to that, which is what affects jobs and decisions about whether to stay open, and financing, all those challenges are being felt right now, but I think they're going to be with us at least until the end of this year.
I've heard many economists say we're looking at indications that economic conditions are improving. I look at sectors like steel and aluminum and chemicals and basic plastics. These products go into everything and they're the ones where we should see demand picking up first. Yet in all those sectors we're seeing orders continue to fall. Companies are working down their inventories. There is the argument that as soon as they work down inventories and demand begins to rise, we'll see a sharp pickup. Well, demand is falling and inventories are continuing to be worked down. I think the impact we're going to see on employment and investment still lies ahead. I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's going to be a very tough year.
If I could, I'd like to say something about the way I usually talk about things and economists generally talk about supply and demand. Looking at opportunity from a business point of view, Canada has at most 2% to 3% of the world market in most manufactured products. That's a big market to expand into, and we're talking on a sector-by-sector basis. But what it really very much boils down to in many cases is how particular companies take advantage of opportunities at particular times. I'm not expecting many companies to grow rapidly, except that we do see some manufacturing companies doing that in Canada right now, but survival may be a really good growth strategy.
I've got members in the automotive industry who are buying up suppliers at a tremendous discount and taking this opportunity to consolidate their business. I have one company that has lost 70% of its production, but has tripled its market share simply because their competitors have gone out of business. So this is changing the economic and competitive landscape, and I think we should assist those companies in taking those opportunities. Just because you're associated with a particular sector doesn't mean you don't have the opportunity and aren't making these adjustments.
On the financing side, though, and I think this is particularly the case with forestry, a part of it is because of the changing nature of demand, the downturn in orders as well as the structural changes companies have to adjust to. What we're seeing for large capital-intensive companies in particular are the financing problems in the market leading to bankruptcy protection decisions or decisions about whether to open or close or keep investment in Canada. If you are highly capital intensive, as most manufacturers are in a large company, and you're a part of a multinational supply chain or a multinational company, you're facing tremendous pressures today to retain and attract investment or at least retain investment in Canada to stay open. Many companies that will go to the bond market to refinance are just finding it impossible to do that and to find securitized financing under these situations.
A part of it is supply and demand, but a very large part of the problem in forestry and in large capital-intensive processing industries, which we have not yet seen because this refinancing is going to be coming up over the coming year, is the inability to access and to refinance debt. Unfortunately, I think that's going to be another shoe that's going to drop over the course of the next year.