Very quickly, on cities, it was the third volume released last week. We have become an urban nation. Often our perception of ourselves lags behind reality, but the reality is that half of Canadians live in the ten major cities. Two-thirds of the jobs created in Canada over the last decade were created in those ten major cities, and 80% of our GDP is produced in cities.
It's interesting when someone from a think tank like the Conference Board comes up to Parliament Hill. You have parliamentary committees on all sorts of things, but is there a committee on cities? In the history of our political institutions, the challenge we have is keeping pace with the changing nature of our economy. We think all levels of government own the city agenda. This is not something on which we stick to the Constitution, with provinces being the sole custodians of cities, because the federal government has huge engagement already with our cities. It has it through immigration settlement; it has it through investments in secondary education—it goes on and on.
We need to invest more in things like infrastructure and industrial ecology. In our report, the two big areas that we identify in which we think a fundamental shift of attitude is required are infrastructure in our cities and particularly transportation.
It is really striking. I have a chance to travel across the country almost every week. Vancouver is the only airport right now that is getting plugged into the rapid transit system within our national economy. It's very striking to land at Pearson International Airport, to have to take a $60 cab ride to get downtown, and to not have any rail. It's the same thing in Montreal. The VIA Rail line is one kilometre away, but in over fifty years we haven't found a way to take the train into Dorval, into Trudeau International Airport. It's really striking. That's an area of critical investment, we believe, as is the whole concept of industrial ecology.
The fact is that we have to think about our cities more as closed systems. Rather than dumping waste outside our cities, find ways to use things that are byproducts as inputs in other production processes. A very different mindset is required for our cities.
We try to finish every presentation with a positive tone. This is warranted because we don't have to wait for someone else to fix our problems. We actually have a good sense of what the challenges are, and we have the tools in our own hands. It's really a question about leadership from governments, from parliamentarians, and also from the private sector and from little think tanks like the Conference Board, to identify the challenges and then offer up opportunities.
Our role is not to carry out the action. We're here to really stimulate debate. I hope we have been able to contribute something to your debate today. We have lots of material and more slides, but I think we're now here to answer your questions.
Thank you very much.