I also come from a small town in which furniture industries used to be a very important part of the economy. In 1990 most of those companies closed down. Much of it was because those companies just couldn't compete against the low-cost goods coming in, particularly from the United States. They were facing tremendous competition from the U.S. They dropped a 23% tariff overnight, and there were no adjustments. In the framework in which they had to make those changes, there was nothing to help them. I'm not talking subsidies. I'm talking about tax policy, employment policy, training policy. There was no net to catch them, nothing to help them make that adjustment.
The Canadian furniture industry was a $3 billion industry in 1990. By 1992 it was down to about $1.5 billion. Today it's about a $12 billion industry. The reason: opening markets allowed companies to become more competitive, more specialized, and more flexible. On the textile side, the clothing side, you had companies like Peerless, which is truly peerless in its ability to satisfy its customers.
It's a very different way of working. It's not just the effects of free trade. Today we're entering a new era of global competition that, whether we act on it or not, is going to result in a general restructuring of Canadian manufacturing. That means we have to choose the domestic policies that will make this transition as easy as possible. We need to provide companies and employees with the ability to upgrade their skills, products, and processes.
That means we need a tax policy that makes it easy to invest in new technology. We have in Canada the world's eighth highest level of taxes on investment in new technology. We have to have in place the right logistic systems, the right training programs. One of the reasons that textile manufacturers, agricultural producers, and furniture manufacturers went into free trade with one hand tied behind their back was that the interprovincial trade barriers they faced up until 1990 prevented them from selling across Canada. These are regulatory barriers that companies face. We can't import deodorant into this country without going through an inspection process different from that of the United States. Now American and Canadian underarms, I would argue, are just about the same. But Canadian consumers lack a lot of the products that are on the shelves in the United States. It's not just separate inspection processes. To resolve those regulatory differences, there has to be an entirely different production process in the U.S.
It works the opposite way too. Regulatory differences keep us out of a lot of U.S. and other markets. We have to deal with these non-tariff barriers. We should align our domestic policies so as to make sure we have prosperous companies that can take advantage of the international market agreements we're negotiating.