Thank you, and welcome to Windsor.
Windsor is often looked at as an automotive town and automotive assembly town, but according to the Windsor-Essex Development Commission statistics, there are more people employed by the plastics and tool-and-die sector in Windsor than there are by the three big auto plants. That puts into perspective how many manufacturing jobs there really are in the area.
I've been president of Bernard Mould for 21 years, and exactly a month ago we realized that we have to shut our doors now. I'm still president for two more months. We're not sure where it's going to be going, but Bernard Mould is closing now after 37 years of manufacturing.
We've shipped moulds to China. We've shipped tools to Taiwan, Mexico, Germany, and Malaysia. We've been very involved in different industry associations. We've been involved with the American Mold Builders and we also participated with the United States International Trade Commission investigation--very similar to what this investigation is--two years ago. That group went through Windsor and parts of southern Ontario, trying to understand better. They analyzed 11 different countries. I'll make that report available to this committee.
I agree with everything that's been said previously. We can be competitive. We have some of the cleverest people in the world. The Canadian culture has been very facilitating to attract people from all over the world to bring their skills here. The SR&ED ITC program, the innovation tax credit program, is extremely important. The investigators have begun to clamp down. Rather than being more facilitating, they have become more strict, to a point of being unnecessarily strict, and that's going to really hurt the manufacturing sector. This is a vehicle the government has to help level the playing field, and it's something that really needs to be revamped, if anything.
I know that to set a new vehicle in place that can help out manufacturers is very difficult, but the ones that are in place, and especially the ones that are working well, should be relooked at and bolstered to help where we can't compete in some other areas. One year ago in November there was a group of South Korean delegates coming through, of course with the promise of free trade with Canada. The mayor of the Gwangju area was here. They had over 20 people in the delegation. They put on a presentation at St. Clair College and then another one in Troy, Michigan. They were offering in their PowerPoint presentation to build us buildings in South Korea in the Gwangju area--they showed us the real estate and everything--rent-free for five years, if we would relocate and take the technology that we have over there. We're still viewed by the world as cutting edge in this area, and that's something that really needs to be protected.
The jobs naturally are being created through innovation. They are the highest-paying jobs. The Americans have also recognized that this industry needs to be supported, as we can see through a Great Lakes group--I forget the actual name of the group now--that is trying to identify for the United States how to protect this industry. It's gone pretty much unnoticed because, as Dan said, these are shops that are on average around 20 people. In our peak four years ago we were up to just under 60 people. It's not earth-shaking or a size of company that really attracts a lot of attention, but there are so many of them. Over the last 100 years they've developed to a point where they really do create a lot of multiplication of jobs and they do create a lot of other opportunities and spin-off businesses. They're big spenders. They do a lot of investment in technology and work a lot with the universities and colleges in the area.
I think it's that innovation that everyone's identified that's going to make the difference with protecting jobs here and keeping the high-paying jobs in Canada. I think it really needs to be supported.