When you look at sector-by-sector productivity numbers, the differences really stand out in two areas--machinery and equipment and information technology. We lag behind in those two areas as well as in some areas of pharmaceuticals.
In auto, in metals, in plastics, in paper and wood products, and in our resource-processing sectors, our levels of productivity are better than America's, but it's these areas of more advanced technologies in which we tend to lag behind.
I think a large part of that is because of the scale of companies, the fact that we're dealing with a lot of small or mid-sized companies, which therefore have more people and less scale. I think a part of it is that we have, in many cases, a very specialized production, so we do small batches of product. I think in the future the value is going to be in that level of customization or specialization, for the company that can produce what is called the competitive batch of one. Doing that is pretty labour-intensive. You can't do that. There's an advantage to making it labour-intensive. If you look at a company like RIM or many other companies in Canada, and you look at where labour is, it's not on the shop floor. It's not in production. It's in the R and D, in the engineering.
All I'm saying is that maybe we'd better be careful how we talk about productivity, particularly from the point of view that you can achieve infinite productivity the day that, as is the case in many companies today, you turn the lights out and you sell off the inventory. There are no people employed, and there's a value for a product, but that's not necessarily where you want to go. What we should be looking at is how you produce more with more, not more with less. You do that, I think, by going to a higher value, more innovative, more specialized type of manufacturing that will also bring with it people here too.
I have to add one other point on productivity.