First of all, I would say--and I think you noted this--that we did get some positive news recently, a 1.4% productivity improvement. One announcement of good news by Statistics Canada is certainly not a trend and it's not time to begin celebrating--although all good news is welcome.
I think it's important for people to focus on what productivity really is. In its essence, it's quite simple; it's output per worker. When we look at firms, we look at how high their output per worker is, and also how it's changing; that's productivity growth.
Some of our productivity problems are measurements. For example, I could talk about the oil and gas sector, which has a high level of productivity, but productivity growth recently has been negative. How can that be? With very high energy prices, it's profitable for firms to exploit reserves that otherwise would not be profitable to exploit. When it comes right down to it, firms seek to maximize profits, not productivity, although in the long term they're linked. Even when you correct for that, we still have poor productivity performance; it's still a worry for Canada.
We've been trying to support firms that are innovating, as Mr. Dicerni said. We have some programs in that respect. In the budget and the Speech from the Throne, the government announced that we're going to have a review of the support for business innovation, and we hope we will get a better understanding through that review of what's at the core of our productivity performance and how we can improve that.