That is a very good question. I'm glad you put that question to me.
The old math, the old belief, that exports are good and imports are bad is archaic. When you actually work within the multilateral trading system and you chat with economists, you understand that for Canada to be competitive in manufacturing, we have to also have access to competitively priced high-quality imports, because those become the inputs to the ultimate product that gets exported out of Canada.
There's some excellent work that has been done by the OECD and the World Trade Organization in partnership. They've looked at trade through a whole new lens in terms of the actual impact that imports have and the actual impact that services have. They've been able to parse out those different considerations. It puts a whole new colour on what trade is all about.
Trade is beyond just exports and imports. It's beyond the old math. It's about investments. It's about driving prosperity through high value. Where is much of that high value today? It's going to be in services. Fifteen per cent of Canada's exports are already represented by services. We would like to grow that because that's where much of the high value is.
I talked earlier about engineering expertise and Canada being the fourth largest exporter of engineering services. That adds value to our Canadian economy. We're dealing with this whole notion of trade surpluses and trade deficits. I would agree with those who say persistent long-term structural trade deficits should be avoided, but to look at it in terms of a short timeframe misleads the public and improperly informs it of the kinds of steps that should be taken to continue to drive economic growth within Canada.