Thank you very much to all three of you for being with us today and sharing your experience and knowledge with us.
This summer I had a chance to sit down with the chief negotiator for the Canada-India trade talks. I think they've conducted four negotiations and are on their fifth.
Among some of the facts and figures they gave me is the fact that India has a population of 1.2 billion right now that is slated to go to 1.5 billion in 2050. The population is actually getting younger, bucking the worldwide trend, so they have a growing younger population, which bodes well for growth. They told me that India anticipates spending $1 trillion in public infrastructure spending over the next five years. That includes building an industrial corridor between Mumbai and New Delhi. They told me that they are growing at the rate of 8% GDP per year, and lately that's about 5%, so it's a very dynamic economy.
The chief negotiator also told me that the Indian negotiators are more interested in—and what they really require from Canada—is investment in technology, more so than the actual export of goods, although they do need those as well. We know that lately Canada's investment in research and development and innovation has been lagging. I think the OECD has ranked fifteenth out of 37 countries in gross domestic expenditures in R and D. How important for your businesses is Canadian investment in promoting growth and trade in the technology sector?