Thank you very much for the question. I want to highlight a few key observations from the outset. One is that the manufacturing sector is still very important to Canada. Even though we've seen a sharp decline, it still represents 1.7 million jobs and 10% of our national economy. It's a significant player when it comes to economic success, presently and going forward.
I also want to highlight the fact that it usually doesn't get enough credit, but it represents 42% of Canada's total business R and D spending. A significant amount of research and development investments are done in the manufacturing sector.
I think the point you made—and I think we need to do a better job of branding it—simply doesn't apply to the auto sector, or it doesn't simply apply to the aerospace sector. It's prevalent in the agricultural sector, the forestry sector, the mining sector, the digital technology sector that you talked about, and life sciences. Manufacturing is prevalent in all of those different sectors. I think we need to do a better job of branding that, marketing that, and coordinating that.
With respect to your point about what the government's view is going forward and what kind of policies we're going to set, I say we have to be setting smart industrial policy. I think it's absolutely important. We're competing with jurisdictions that are doing the same thing. We will fall behind if we don't play an active role. ICT adoption is going to be critical.
You mentioned industrial and technological benefits. This is something that we take seriously with the national shipbuilding procurement strategy coming up. We want to make sure we have a strong value proposition that enables us to gain a strong a footprint here in Canada with respect to the ITB process. That's important simply because we don't want to lose out on the opportunity of creating companies not only as a part of that process, but we want to gain the expertise, the skill, and the know-how so they can be part of global supply chains going forward. The idea again is to set ourselves up for the long-term success when it comes to industrial policy. This is an area that is a priority for us.
As you know full well, in our budget we talked about growing the economy. We have slow growth rates. Even though we go up, they're very modest. We have to understand that we want to create good quality jobs. The investments that we'll be making in ITB are going to be focused on the middle class and good quality jobs. It's consistent with our overall government economic agenda. We are committed to this and we made sound investments. I illustrated the automotive sector, for example, but we made sound investments in the budget and will continue to do so going forward.