You're quite right in terms of it being more management centric than shareholder centric. The idea of living quarter by quarter is a phenomenon that is not known really in Japan. They take a much longer view.
In terms of R and D, you're absolutely right. Their R and D expenditure, if you take it as a percentage of gross national product, is about three to four times what Canada's is. More than 25% of all patents filed internationally are Japanese. They have surpassed the United States in that in some years. R and D is tremendously important.
Two of the major cards in the Canadian deck, in my view, are food and energy. Japan is a country that has little of either naturally. Those of you who were there will have seen what a mountainous country it is. The arable land in Japan is smaller than the state of Maryland, so they are not going to be an agricultural giant. You probably saw rice paddies. Instead of growing grass on their front lawns, people grow rice. You see it everywhere.
Japan is the only country in the world where you can walk down the street and ask people what the food security index is. The food security index for them is the self-sufficiency they have in terms of their own food, and everybody knows it. It's one that has been going down and down and is well below 50%. I don't know what it is right now, but the man on the street could probably tell you, because it is published almost as much as weather reports in Japan.
Canada is a food supplier not just for commodities but for finished products as well. Unless you're going to cook the steak before you send it over, there's not much more you can actually do with it.
You may, by the way, have picked up—and this is good news—that the advisory committee on the importation of cattle has now recommended they go to 30 months from the 20 months, so they're moving in the right direction on that.
In terms of energy security, Japan is a country that has made enormous progress in reducing its dependency on oil. A lot of that has been nuclear, and we've seen the challenge with nuclear. It finds itself in a very difficult situation with most of the oil that it uses coming through the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East, and with natural gas. It's the largest importer in the world of natural gas, which comes from the Middle East, from Australia, and from Indonesia, which is a declining market. There is a sense of vulnerability. There are enormous opportunities in energy for Canada.
I was there about four months ago and did a seminar at the Canadian embassy, the title of which was “Canada: an Emerging Energy Superpower?” If you were in the embassy, you would have seen that the theatre holds 237. We had over 400 people there, which is indicative of the interest.
Those are two areas. They are not short-term phenomena. The food requirements of the Japanese population will continue, and either we will be supplying them or somebody else will be supplying them. The same goes for energy if we choose to do so.