I would entirely agree. What you stated is accurate. Our members have huge holdings in pension funds across Canada, in mutual funds across Canada. Most Canadians, one way or another, probably have an interest in, and benefit from, the activity of the industry.
If I remember the number correctly, our members account for about a quarter of the value of the TSX. Obviously, it's a huge industry, as it represents, as we mentioned earlier, around 500,000 jobs, and those are certainly by no means exclusively in western Canada. Is there a concentration in western Canada? There is, absolutely. But on the manufacturing side, in central and eastern Canada, there are tens of thousands of jobs tied to the oil and gas industry.
I would just briefly comment on something a couple of other folks have mentioned, and that is the idea of the run-up to $147 and then the decline to $31. Yes, we would agree that was very hard on the industry. And it's not just the $31 that's hard. Actually, the $147 was extremely disruptive to things like oil sands development just because of the impact on input costs.
Now, I'm not here to talk about why the price moved in that way--we have experts to talk about that--but I will acknowledge that that kind of price was actually almost as challenging as the very low price.
I would just make one other comment. I don't think it's a matter of western Canada being in great shape and the rest of the country not benefiting from that. I think the rest of the country does benefit tremendously from good things happening in western Canada, but I also would note that the oil and gas industry right now is really two economies in Canada. The oil industry is in very good condition. The gas industry in Canada is really struggling.