Again on that point, the Canadian workforce has proved itself not only for the big three traditional manufacturers, but with Toyota's selecting Ontario as the site for its new plant. That would speak to the fact that of course we can build a good car—in fact, among the best in the world.
The one point I would add is that sometimes there is a debate about the nationality of the home producer. That's never been the source of debate for Canada. Canada's never had an auto industry domestically. We've had an American industry, and now we have an American, a German, and a Japanese industry.
Certainly Japanese vehicles can be built here and sold here in Canada in an open market, but the issue is that the market is not open. North America has the most open penetration of any major vehicle market in the world. Over 20% of vehicles sold in North America are built outside North America, and that includes Mexico. In Japan it's 5% and in Korea it's under 1% of vehicles that are built outside those countries. Again, it's not a question: Japanese consumers I think would like to buy North American-made vehicles, frankly, but they have not been allowed in. That has been the history. In fact the automakers have abandoned that strategy, largely.
So it's not a question about that. Certainly global trade can help foster productivity and innovation in an industry, but the question for a nation is, what are you going to do to balance that trade for the benefit of your economy? Obviously it involves jobs, and that's employment for the nation. So I think it's partially that.
On the point about the future and whether we will be building as many cars, the latest predictions are that despite the announcements we've seen, we're going to have a net decline of around 7% in auto production by 2012. A lot more of it will be transplant production—Honda, Toyota, and maybe others—which make a lot fewer and buy a lot fewer domestic parts still to this day, so the employment impact will be down.