Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary has gone on to stage two. If we have this committee these are the things we are going to have to talk about. I agree, there are many, many measures of economic health. The value of one currency against the American currency is only one of them.
However, the truth of the matter is that we export a great deal to the United States. That means that every prairie farmer, every British Columbia lumberman, everybody who produces something and exports it to the United States now gets paid 65 cents on the dollar because those things are measured in American dollars. Whether we do that conversion using a calculator to multiply by .65 or whether we have a common currency, it means that every worker now, instead of getting $10 an hour, would get $6.50 an hour.
If we want to be competitive at our present rate of inefficiency and with our high level of taxation, especially employer taxation, if we take all of those things into account, I think the bottom line is yes, the currency can act as a little bit of a buffer locally. However, it in no way solves the final problem and that is that we have policies in this country that just do not permit us to be as efficient as we ought to be.