In terms of technology investment, I think it's one of the things that is so important, whether it's information and communications technology or other types of technology. We talked a little bit about what kinds of programs are available through capital cost allowance regimes and so on. You start there--and I'll come to training in a minute.
You look at those kinds of incentives. We very much support the idea of ensuring we have the kind of economic structure that says it makes sense to invest. What we've seen more recently is a pretty significant change in terms of the level of investment of companies in Canada in machinery, equipment, and technology. There are a number of reasons for that. The dollar is probably one of them.
In terms of training--if I could just go there for a minute--we've given this a lot of thought in terms of looking at how much companies might benefit from.... And we have tons of incentives in our economy built in today; some of them, I might argue, we should think about getting out of our economy.
This is an area where I think it's worth talking about, in terms of saying, without having the solution, should we be doing some work to think about what kind of incentive might exist to enhance the training opportunity for certain companies? And part of the reason I say that is the nature and the structure of our economy. We haven't talked a lot about small business today, but that is the Canadian economy in terms of firms tending to be very small, and I think everybody around this table in this committee knows that.
So there's a challenge that perhaps doesn't exist in some other economies, including that of our friends south of the border who have many more medium and large firms than we do.
So we do think it's worth talking about.