You are correct. Of all Canadian industries, our sector is probably the one that has faced the most international competition. The emergence of countries where labour costs are lower has hurt, but the fact that it is combined with a rising dollar has made things even more difficult since that increase has caused a rise in labour costs in our industry.
In the long term, of course, the best way to adjust to that is to increase productivity, but also to focus on less labour-intensive and more R&D-intensive activities. In our industry, that is what we are starting to call the "advanced manufacturing sector". In future, you will be surprised to see that, compared to 20 years ago, the new manufacturing plants will really have fewer employees. However, industry workers will be far more educated. They will be engineers, researchers and so on.
It is hard to say how many jobs will be affected, but we know how this will affect the investments of R&D businesses. In our sector, activities will be focused much more on design than assembly. This kind of tax credit is important when a company in our industry makes investment decisions, but we must not overlook companies elsewhere that are looking for the best environment in which to do business.
In the past, we had an enormous competitive advantage as a result of the fact that our dollar was lower than the currency of many other countries we did business with. We no longer have that advantage, particularly relative to the United States, as you said. Like other countries, the United States is introducing aggressive tax measures to attract this new advanced manufacturing sector. In Montreal, for example, Electrolux and Kruger have moved to places like Memphis, in the United States. Some states are also very aggressive from a tax standpoint.
I do not believe we should play at being the country with the lowest taxes, but we should act on our strengths. As our university sector is quite effective, we must take advantage of that. We also have a quite skilled labour force. There are deficiencies in certain sectors, and that is a problem, but we must implement tax systems that enable industries to take risks in those fields.