Thank you, Chair.
I'm going to ask all my questions right up front of the various witnesses.
My first question is for Mr. Belzile. You talked about Quebeckers. I fly back and forth to Edmonton; I'm an Alberta member of Parliament. Often the flight that I fly home on originates in Montreal, lands in Ottawa, and then goes on to Edmonton. I can say that on virtually every flight I'm on there are a number of francophones, quite clearly, all wearing a Suncor or Syncrude or other type of jacket. They're going out there; they're going to work. They have their lunch pails with them and their workboots on. I just want to say on behalf of my province, I'm just so glad to see so many economic benefits, because I know that money's coming back and it's on the table for the families of those workers who come out and help us.
That's been happening right across the country. We've had folks coming from all four corners of this great nation of ours to help the Alberta economy grow. We used to have folks coming from Saskatchewan, but they've all gone back now that they have a conservative-minded government back there. So we're going to need even more Canadians coming to help us with that.
You talked about the lack of information, and I'm just wondering what you think the government's responsibility is for providing information to all Canadians about the values and benefits. What do you think industry's responsibility is? Have you any comments? You talked about a lack of information, and I actually see it as purposeful misinformation campaigns that have been at work in various parts of the country.
Mr. Cross, you talked about market diversification. I have a question for you. I'm wondering if you have anything more to offer the committee on whether or not we should be pursuing more active market diversification for our energy resources or product diversification, or is there some kind of sweet spot on both that would be valuable?
Ms. Bak, I have two questions for you on your slides. On the slide on page 4 you said that for the SMEs in non-resources we've seen a dip in 2007 to 2009. You said it was a liquidity issue, yet we saw a spike for resources. They all borrow money from the same bank, so the liquidity issue would have been the same. Can you explain to me what the difference there is?
On slide 13 you have a forecast of the diversification of up to 70% of our products. It looks like almost one-third, one-third, one-third, and it looks as if we're unhinging from a dependency on the United States from that perspective. Can you tell us what assumptions and economic factors are at play for that forecast?