I could probably explain it to you better in English.
The concept--and this is really based on analysis done at the OECD, a multilateral organization--is that when you invest you're pulling along other services and you're deepening your business penetration with other countries, so there's a multiplier effect created by investment. It's not merely a matter of exporting jobs, although that does happen, but it's a matter of building that part of production into your total business model and making a particular business or a particular sector more competitive. So the analysis the OECD has done, which has been replicated at Export Development Canada, where I was prior to joining the Conference Board, shows that for a dollar invested in an industrial country, in a mature country, you probably get a multiplier of about 60¢, 0.6. So there's a small net effect through creating more trade by deeper engagement. But when you invest the same dollar in an emerging market you get a much more positive multiplier.
We actually cite the EDC analysis that says two dollars of future trade for every dollar invested. But in fact the poorer the country, where the country is less developed, where it has a less sophisticated economic system, financial system, where markets are not as well developed, you get a much higher multiplier. For a very low-income country you might get a multiplier of six times. So one dollar invested may create as much as six dollars of future trade, two-way trade, between the two countries. So that's a huge knock-on effect.
That's part of the reason why I personally have been on a bandwagon on this for five or six years in my research. We have to focus a lot more energy, not just on attracting investment to Canada, but on actually facilitating investment outward by our companies because there is this significant multiplier effect. That's particularly true at a time when we no longer have labour surpluses, when we now have labour shortages. One way to actually generate wealth in Canada is to encourage our business community to use investment as a way to deepen their penetration of other markets, to make themselves more efficient, to reach other consumers, to make sales from foreign affiliates.
But, really, c'est le degré d'engagement d'intégration.