Thank you.
Mr. Egan, picking up on your comments about the regulatory framework and how it acts as a signal to investors, I agree with you, but I disagree with your conclusions regarding innovation and productivity.
I'd like to share with you a quotation from The Economist of October 6, 2012, which says that:
...Canadian private investment is divided evenly between machinery and equipment, which boost productivity sharply, and structures that store and transport goods, which have less of an impact. In the United States structures account for a far smaller share. This discrepancy may simply be a result of Canada’s dependence on natural resources such as oil, which requires pipelines. But it means that the country’s investments yield fewer gains in productivity than those south of the border do.
The position of gas and oil, with their rush to export to foreign markets using pipelines, will benefit shareholders, it's true, and will benefit some workers for a limited period of time, but not as much as if we added value here in Canada.
The study by the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity that just came out says that for each hour we work in Canada, we generate less value than our counterparts in the U.S. This prosperity gap is a productivity gap, and the productivity gap is an innovation gap: “...we are laggards in creating economic value per hour worked”.
With the focus being solely on export of product, I'd have to disagree with your conclusion about industry fostering innovation and productivity in its current state.
I think the downstream players have a large role to play. I'm excited about things such as integrated community energy solutions, which we talked about in Winnipeg, but I don't see that the signal is being given to investors to invest in those areas as of yet. I'd like to see that signal being given more, rather than the signal to simply export the product to foreign markets.