I think I mentioned in my opening remarks that the oil and gas industry provides 450,000 well-paying jobs to Canadians. In Cenovus itself, we employ more than 8,000 employees, and those are well-paying jobs that pay well above the industry average and allow people to live independently and enjoy a high quality of life and a high standard of living.
Similarly, this industry, because we export our product, creates a demand for Canadian dollars, which increases the value of the Canadian dollar and supports all Canadians in the products that we import, which I talked about as well.
The biggest contribution by far is the amount that we pay in taxes and royalties. Royalties are actually unique to the natural resource industry in that we actually make contributions to the government well before we make any profits. Even in times of low commodity prices, governments across Canada can count on the support that they get from the extractive natural resource industry. Those amounts, including the taxes we pay, as I mentioned, are more than 50% of what we earn. When we make profits, Canada benefits not just in terms of royalties, taxes, jobs and the Canadian dollar but also in terms of the investment that we make.