Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and the committee. Welcome to Windsor, as you come to Windsor on this particular day.
I'm the president of the Windsor and District Labour Council, and I represent over 40,000 different affiliates to my organization. I'm also the financial secretary of Local 444 of the Canadian Auto Workers, representing Daimler workers and some parts manufacturing plants here in the city of Windsor.
I share the views of the two previous speakers and the concerns that we have in relationship to the uncompetitiveness we find ourselves in within the Canadian economy and the auto industry. When one looks at what's happening as far as a level playing field is concerned.... And I know the committee has previously heard the Canadian Auto Workers presentation in regard to what's happening. I'm talking particularly about what Buzz Hargrove, the president of the Canadian Auto Workers, said in relation to a level playing field.
We do not have a level playing field here in Canada. What we do have is a continuous onslaught of—and these are my words—dumping from offshore producers into our country and the United States as well, which is having a devastating effect. Contrary to what you may have read in the paper this morning from Mr. Desrosiers, that everything is fine in the auto industry, it's fine if you're an offshore producer that imports 80% of your parts into this country from where their home base is, but it's certainly not good for the manufacturing industry within this community and other communities in Ontario predominantly in relation to the production of the automobile. There are a lot of reasons that I think this is taking place.
There has been a lot of emphasis by governments both federally and provincially on the whole question of taxation. The actual facts are, according to the World Economic Forum, that back in 1999, when we ranked fifth in the World Economic Forum scorecard, Canada's taxes were slightly higher than the OECD average. Today they are substantially lower. Indeed, Canada's taxes have fallen faster since 1999 than any of the 15 countries ahead of us, by 3.3 percentage points of the GDP. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we're at $50 billion per year.
Yet the faster we cut taxes, the further we fall in the competitive rankings. Why is that? We say it's because we're not on this level playing field. We say that it's government policy that is dictating our disadvantage in relationship to some of our other competitors offshore. Why do we not have the same opportunity that they do, and obviously have access to their markets? It's hurtful when we hear the CEO of the DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Tom LaSorda, indicate in the press this week that they're looking to China to have parts imported into this country. That's absolutely devastating to the people to the right of me when they look at this type of an announcement from the head CEO of a multinational corporation that is looking elsewhere.
We can compete as workers in this particular country. We have good skilled workers. We need more skilled workers, and that brings me to another point. As far as funding for schooling in relationship to the whole question of trade is concerned, when you look at trades in this particular economy or in this day and age, the actual funding for education has fallen. It's fallen to the detriment of us as Canadians.
We believe there have to be more federal dollars and provincial dollars going into the training of our workers, our young workers, and those who are going to be displaced as a result of some of these policies I prefaced my remarks with. We can't have older workers, as an example—and we cite older workers as 50 and older—not having the opportunity to be retrained into viable jobs, not just have access to unemployment insurance, which is another subject I could get involved in, and the whole question of what's happening there in relationship to workers.
We need workers who are going to have the opportunity to be retrained and have the ability to get back into the workforce for jobs that we hope, through government change in policies, are going to be prevalent.
I look forward to the dialogue today with the committee, and we'll be open to questions. I have other information that possibly we can get into later.
I have a colleague with me today, Mike Vince, who is the president of Local 200 of the Canadian Auto Workers. Hopefully he'll have an opportunity to give a personal point of view of what's happening to his particular local in the onslaught he's facing with the closure of an engine plant and what the community is facing with the possible loss of 2,200 jobs.