Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Bains, as you know, we have launched a study on the manufacturing sector. I am a bit concerned about the status of manufacturing and the direction in which we are going in Canada. I would like to compare Canada with the oil-rich Arab countries. The only common thing we have is oil. The Arab countries also have oil, but there every single day a new manufacturing plant is coming up. It is not just adding value to oil. It is not just the petrochemical plants or the fertilizer plants or the power-intensive industries, but manufacturing companies in every segment. They don't have expertise. They don't have technology. They don't have manpower, and they don't have markets. We have all of these things. I'm a bit concerned that we are not looking seriously and going beyond the auto sector or the aerospace sector now that we are talking of clean tech, which is good, but still we have a lot of opportunities in Canada, especially in Ottawa.
Many times talking about Ottawa, people forget that in Ottawa we have a larger number of knowledge-based companies than in Kitchener and Waterloo. We have the DRDC here, and we have a technology sector here. There are a lot of opportunities here to promote the C4ISR companies: the command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance industries. The U.S. defence R and D project is around $90 billion, and Canadian companies are considered U.S. domestic companies when it comes to U.S. defence acquisition. Maybe we are facing this problem because we don't have an industrial policy that will create a sort of road map on these kinds of sectors with ways to go and how to go.
What are your thoughts on that?