That's a good question.
To some extent it's not just the exchange rate. I think this is where Joy's expertise is really useful. It's also that small Canadian companies, whether they're importers or exporters, usually take on the border risk as well, so I think apart from overall sound economic and fiscal policies, which are extremely important, there are agencies like EDC, for example, that play, I think, a crucial role in being able to offset some of the financial risk around exchange rate volatility. Other financial institutions do as well.
But what we're seeing on the part of companies doing business internationally.... The exchange rate risk itself, plus the downsizing of customer demand in the U.S. market, may be one reason Canadian companies are not exporting, and maybe have turned to the domestic market, to the resource and infrastructure projects here in Canada, which for many of them offer a far better rate of return on their investments and their sales than trying to continue to do business in the United States. That may be one of the reasons we've seen the number of exporters and the number of our exports to the U.S. decline.
But clearly better border policy.... Two years ago, Statistics Canada did a survey looking at the impact of tighter border measures on Canadian exports and imports. They found on both sides that about 10% or 12% of companies had stopped doing business with the United States solely because of the problems at the border, so clearly we need to do something there.
We have seen a lot of companies try to offset some of this risk by balancing their exports and imports and by taking on, at a time of a high dollar, more U.S.-denominated debt, expanding their capacity across the Canada-U.S. border, or internationally.
Services that enable them to make these decisions and to flexibly change their business organization are important. That again is where some of the regulatory problems come in, because they can be a real sticking point in being able to get that flexibility.