Thank you to all of your worships for being here today. It's really important to have your firsthand experience as leaders in your respective communities to understand in a very direct way what's happening in the economy in people's day-to-day lives. Thank you for your presentations.
I'm a big believer in our industries and our employers and the men and women who go to work every day and provide the goods and services we all rely on. When people talk about statistics of companies closing or laying off, or the impact in abstract economic terms, it really kind of glosses over the true impact of what this means in people's lives.
I think the significance of you three coming here as witnesses is that you are representing relatively small communities. I come from Toronto, and we have had about 125,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector, but when you talk about, for example, the Hershey plant in Smiths Falls, it's a big facility, but the proportionate effect on a community like Smiths Falls is massive.
We've been talking a lot about the impact of the Canadian dollar on manufacturing because the manufacturing sector not only provides the goods that we need in our economy and that we export, but it provides people with that quality of life--as Mayor Fenik has said--in terms of being able to support families and provide a good tax base for our communities as well. It is a very important part of our economy.
Something that I always try to do in my own community--we have a lot of small businesses--is I'm always urging people to buy local, to shop with their local businesses, because it does make a huge difference.
Mayor Fenik, you raised an issue I would like you to elaborate a bit more on. When Canadian funds--our tax dollars--are being invested in production of defence or whatever kind of procurement, to then see those dollars contracted out to purchase abroad.... There really should be consideration given to Canadian production. Can you elaborate more on how you would see that happening, or what would work in your community in terms of a Canadian component to procurement?