Madam Speaker, just to conclude, paying Uncle Sam? I do not think the member knows what country he is in, let alone much about our tax policy.
I am very happy to engage in the debate and talk about what I think is maybe an unsung part of the budget which has to do with productivity. Some of the members across the way have touched on this issue.
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time as well.
Usually when we start talking about productivity a lot of people go to sleep, not least of which is the opposition. But productivity basically means how efficiently we use inputs of production. I am trying not to sound like an economist but what I mean by that is labour and labour components either to make manufactured goods or to provide services. We use labour, technology, capital, equipment and so forth.
The object of the exercise is to utilize those things more effectively and more efficiently. That is to say how can we use less of a component of these goods to produce more and more services? That is often what we call productivity.
People in the labour movement often hear business people talking about productivity and they feel a bit threatened about losing their jobs. But that is not what I am talking about at all. How can labour, as one of those component factors, utilize its time more effectively and more efficiently?
Why is this important? It is important because Canada is definitely falling behind many of our major competitors, not the least of which is the United States. I believe the Conference Board of Canada's recent report claimed that Canada's productivity lags behind our American counterparts by as much as 20%.
This is important because it impacts our standard of living. The televisions we have, the furniture we use, the cars we drive are all factors of productivity statistics. A lot of people believe that Canada is hiding its poor productivity rating behind its lower valued dollar vis-a-vis the United States. In other words, if our dollar suddenly increased in value we would have some significant job losses and losses to our effective competitiveness in the world markets because this productivity number would suddenly become very important and very glaring to a lot of people as to how we have not been keeping up with some of our competitors.
This budget addresses that issue. It addresses that issue in some very fundamental ways. It does that by increasing our funding by about $1.8 billion. These are some of the areas in which that money has gone, $200 million to the Canadian opportunities strategy and $55 million a year for biotechnology research and development. I do not have to tell a lot of people out there how important biological research is. Canada has developed many products and we have done that, and I would not use the word assistance, but by governments and businesses working together to find common solutions to find new technologies where Canada can be very competitive.
We have increased funding of $75 million for what we call the granting councils, the National Research Council and the Medical Research Council. We talk about medicare and funding. Members have been talking about giving the money back to the provinces, but this is another fundamental way in which the government is assisting with finding new technologies to solve some of our medical problems.
Canada has been a major leader in the world in discovering new technologies to find new drugs and other medical cures. I do not have to tell members we are well asserted as an incubation tank for that because our population is getting older, possibly more rapidly than in any of the G-7 countries. We are very concerned about finding cures for some of our medical problems.
We have put $60 million into a three year program to develop smart demonstration projects. This allows communities to find ways to use the information highway to more effectively utilize the resources they have.
In my community I think of all the hospitals being wired together which would enable a resident in one hospital being able to wire information back and forth to another hospital some miles away so that a patient in one location could have access to the expert care they need.
These are the kinds of technologies that will make Canada a better place to live and help keep our brain power. Some people say that Canada is a country full of great resources but our greatest resource is still the resource we have between our ears.
I am very proud to be a part of a government that has provided some additional funding for these areas. It provided $60 million for GeoConnections. This is a mapping system to allow our communities to plug into each other and to understand their regions. I do not have to tell the House that Canada is the second largest country in the world. The knowledge of who we are and where we are is very important for us to be successful.
I will speak a bit about some of the additional funding that has gone into the technologies partnership program. There is an additional $150 million that has gone into the technologies partnership program. Some of that money went into a company close to my riding called Cametoid. This is a company that makes paint for the Challenger rockets that the United States is sending up. This is a unique technology that was made possible by this government's providing the additional funding. These are not grants. They are not give away programs. It leverages some of the risk capital that the company needs to take on some of these projects. Some banks ask what they are going to give them for collateral. Here we are selling products to the United States. The company has about 20 direct jobs and 17 indirect jobs.
I was on the floor of the De Havilland plant when the minister was there to give the technology partnerships grant. That is money that is coming back to us. It is paid back to us through a royalty payment system. I talked to those workers and they said that manoeuvre saved 2,000 jobs in the city of Toronto. That is a very positive way that we are increasing the knowledge base that exists in our country. We are keeping Canadians employed and we are keeping them at home.
Why is this a problem? As I mentioned, the OECD has stated that even with solid improvements in Canada, it is likely that our country will slip below the average in the standard of living of the OECD countries by 2015.
From 1973 to 1995 the average annual rate of real domestic gross product increased in Canada. It went up 2.6%. Productivity went up 1%. Canada's score sheet in some of these areas has not been as good as some of our neighbours. Labour productivity and growth averaged about 1% per year during the 1990s. The average of the OECD countries is 4%. Why is that? Frankly, I do not know. Some of my colleagues will say it is because of our tax laws. That is not quite the case. The business sector is somewhat responsible for this.
In the United States the business community supports its university systems in the area of research and development. That is not the case in Canada. I am not saying we do not do any of that but our businesses only marginally support our university environments. As a consequence, Canada's funding is heavily reliant on government grants to granting councils. Another positive way which governments could make a contribution is to the networks of centres of excellence across the country which allow our scientists to communicate with one another, not in the lifestyles today but the lifestyles five or ten years down the road.
It takes a long time for that kind of technology to seep through and be effective. We have to find better ways for Canadians to use the technology that is available. I am very proud to be a part of a government that has made a significant down payment on that reality.