Thank you for being here today.
I had a number of questions. They have been skilfully asked by a number of my colleagues, so I will be left to conjecture, with the permission of the committee.
Mr. Wright, you said earlier that in the last five years, services output grew by an average of 3.2%. You associated this with a healthy economy. I'm wondering if in your mind the success we've seen in the past....
I want to talk about where we're going to go in the next few months. I think this is what the committee is most concerned about--anticipation of the strength of the services sector--particularly in light of the looming credit crisis south of the border in the U.S., which threatens to drag the U.S. into a recession. As well, there is obviously the high value of the Canadian dollar and its overall impact on the challenges you have cited here, one being, from a trade dimension, our ability to export services.
I'm wondering if the lower interest rates, the robust resources economy that we've seen of late, and the U.S. economy tend to be the three areas that can account for the success in the services sector. If that is the case, are we now looking at a very different potential set of circumstances that could rapidly have a negative impact on the growth in output and the success story of the services sector in Canada?