Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to address the issue of the prosperity gap that was mentioned very clearly in the trade committee report. Mr. Menzies speaks on it quite often. In fact, Mr. Menzies took five committee meetings to talk about the prosperity gap. He seems obsessed with the issue.
The reality is that most Canadian families are earning less since we started the free trade process, starting with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1989, going through to NAFTA. If we look at Statistics Canada figures, about 80% of Canadian families have either seen stagnation or they've seen their real incomes actually fall.
One of the chief contributory factors to that, many observers believe, is related to the fact that we're exporting raw resources. We're exporting our oil and gas, exporting our raw logs rather than exporting manufactured products, value-added products.
I have two questions. One is related to thinking outside the box; we have to diversity our markets. It is reckless to have 86% of our exports going to one market. It means that market determines what goes in and what doesn't. We saw that with the softwood sellout. What effort is devoted to diversifying our market, and how much is manufacturing capacity and value-added production part of the overall thrust of international trade?
And Mr. Menzies I'm sure will want to ask a question on the prosperity gap later on.