I think the very first thing—and this was touched on by a coalition of business groups—is that we have interprovincial barriers in this country, which are ludicrous, quite frankly. With these, we put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage. This is quite a bizarre situation. So at a minimum, for instance, the benefits that we're extending to the European Union, we should be extending interprovincially. That would be a first starting point.
As well, the second starting point is our critical infrastructure, notably for export, but things like rail, ports, airports, and those types of things. We could do much more in terms of developing those and utilizing that export capacity to penetrate the European market.
I'll give you an example of how you could switch those deficits over in a heartbeat. I don't know what our trade situation is with Japan, but we could be running a deficit with Japan of $7 billion. If we get one LNG plant up and running, all of a sudden we're going to go into surplus. In many cases, that's the nature of the beast. If you can facilitate certain industries, they can swing the numbers so much, and certainly when you have a more limited relationship with certain countries, that can have a more significant impact than negotiating a comprehensive trade agreement can.
But the thing is, to go back to the European Union, the nature of our relationship is different. The export and import of goods is the minority; it's the smallest part of the relationship. The biggest part is the investment and the services pieces. The conventional statistics are not capturing those properly. Or if they are, they're not being translated properly; they're not reflecting the reality of our relationship. We're too focused on what we put on a boat and send to Europe, and not focused enough on what we are actually doing in terms of economic activity in that market and, reciprocally, what the Europeans are doing in our market.
Whether or not you're opposed to or supportive of the oil sands, in the last 10 years, the majority of the investment that's come in has been from European firms. It hasn't been Asian firms. It's been Shell, Statoil, BP, and Total. They're the ones who have been putting in the money. They're the ones who've been putting money into our economy and creating jobs. That gets ignored when we talk about our relationship with Europe.