I think we agree in saying that productivity is one of the key factors of economic growth. That's especially the case in the manufacturing sector, but also in other sectors. Think of the retail industry and other sectors where productivity issues can result in a price drop with regard to the number of units sold. In our sector, we are talking about units produced.
When it comes to that, an increase in productivity is the only way to provide a long-term response to the challenges our sector has been facing over the past 10 years. We are facing increased international competition from countries where labour is much cheaper than in Canada. We also have a dollar whose value has gone from under $0.80 to parity with the U.S. dollar. In the long term, greater productivity is the only thing that will allow Canada to manufacture products at the same price as those from countries like China, where workers have lower wages.
In Quebec, the company Mega Brands has invested in the automation of its Montreal factory and has repatriated to Canada the production that was previously being handled in China. The $30 million it has invested in its factory to improve productivity has made that repatriation worth its while. This way, the company is reducing the risks stemming from manufacturing in a country it is less familiar with.
I want to come back to what I said in the beginning. Many people think productivity implies that people will no longer be involved and that only machines will handle the production. That's not how I see things. I think that, by reducing labour costs, we can be more productive, thus enabling us to manufacture here products that would normally be manufactured in countries with cheaper labour. Our labour has become fairly expensive. Over the past 10 years, the manufacturing sector has gone from an hourly rate that used to be half as much as it was in the United States, to a rate that is now slightly higher than it is in the U.S. We are not even talking about China here. We are talking about the United States. Our labour is more expensive than U.S. labour, and we have a productivity deficit of about 50%. Currently, our problem is twofold, and we need to resolve it.