Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank you all for being here. I particularly liked your wording, Mr. Lazar, about our country needing a vision, and we need to move forward. I want you to know the government is listening to you today just as we did last year. We did that unprecedented study with 22 recommendations. I want to find out how you feel about how the government is addressing 21 out of those 22 recommendations. I want to correct for the record, because it appears a fallacy keeps getting repeated here, that we've only acted on one of the recommendations. So I would like to go over some of the things we have acted on and I want to ask your opinion on how we're doing so far.
You mentioned the CCA for manufacturing, and we did put that in for a two-year writeoff. The Minister of Finance has been very clear publicly that this is something he can look at increasing.
The improved SR and ED tax credit program. Finance announced this summer we are doing a review of the SR and ED.
As far as the energy sector is concerned, it says, “review its policies and regulatory and fiscal measures to ensure they make a greater contribution to...clean and renewable energy sources”. We talk about the ecoENERGY renewable initiative that we launched, regulating the use of renewables in fuel, incentives for producers, renewable fuels investment in Canada, ecoTRUST, ecoENERGY technology initiative, the Canada School of Sustainable Energy. We extended and expanded the CCN class 43.2 equipment.The NSERC and NRC target major investments in the clean and renewable energy sector.
In labour, we were asked to establish an agency for the assessment and recognition of foreign credentials. We did confirm our commitment through the creation of the Foreign Credentials Referral Office to be operational, and it was operational this past spring.
Improve the temporary foreign worker program. We were asked to do that. The program is to be improved as announced in budget 2007, but we're ensuring employment opportunities for Canadians are not reduced.
Again in labour, provide tax credits and other measures to companies providing employer financed training. We did that in budget 2006-07.
Increase support for post-secondary students and post-doctoral fellows conducting research in industry. We made many announcements in this regard for the youth program and NSERC; the Canada social transfer transfers to the provinces record amounts of money; improvements to the student loan program, new industrial R and D internship programs; funding for the granting--