Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You're giving us the same test as the manufacturing industry people. It's very educational. You table a pile of documents, and we have to adapt that reality in five minutes. We even have a department that doesn't have a document, for lack of time to prepare one. You're plunging us into the situation of people who work in plants, but we can still move a little.
The table on the tourism industry and the table on page 2 of Industry Canada's presentation, entitled "Average Growth in Real GDP by Industrial Sector", subtly shows the influence of the price of oil on U.S. tourists who come to Canada. The table is well disguised, but you quickly understand that the long-term growth in natural resources will increase, whereas that of the manufacturing sector will decline.
I'd like you to produce this table for comparison purposes. We could see that the price of oil is rising and the number of manufacturing jobs is falling. Last weekend, La Presse reported that 71,000 jobs in the Canadian manufacturing sector have been lost since last year.
In his notes, Mr. Brown states:
While we cannot intervene in energy markets to ensure cheap energy, we can work to improve the energy efficiency of Canadian manufacturers.
I'm not saying control prices, but wouldn't it be important to conduct studies in your departments to determine how we could reduce the effect of energy price increases? As regards gasoline, we know that, if refinery profit margins were reasonable, the consequences wouldn't be as great. We're currently experiencing the biggest increase in the value of the dollar in 28 years. The way things are going, energy price increases and the boom in the energy sector will over in five years, but there'll be no more manufacturing sector.
What are you doing in your departments to offset that effect? I apologize to the tourism industry, but we may not have the time to talk today. We'll have to have another meeting, if necessary, because your tables are very significant and very well done.
Mr. Brown could begin and tell us what his department is doing to ensure that energy prices are as low as possible. The idea isn't to control them, but to find a way to reduce the negative impact of price increases, as was done in the case of oil sands development.