Mr. Speaker, today I want to address the Kyoto issue from the perspective of investment, or in this case, lack of investment, because I will make the case today that entering into the agreement at this time, at a time when our major trading partners are not entering into the same agreement, will certainly affect the amount of foreign investment in Canada. In fact, I would even put the case that it will probably affect the amount of domestic Canadian investment in Canada, which will be looking for a home elsewhere.
Prior to becoming the finance critic for this party, the Canadian Alliance, I spent three years as the critic for industry. During that time we conducted three separate studies in terms of Canada's productivity and competitiveness. I see some members on the other side who were on that same committee. What we found was a longstanding decline in Canada's competitive position in the world. This goes back some 25 years. Twenty-five years ago, the United States was the number one country in the world in terms of productivity and Canada was number two. Unfortunately, public policy, which in many cases originated right here in the House of Commons, had the effect of dragging Canada down so that we are now 13th in terms of productivity in the world and our competitiveness has been greatly affected.
I will put it to the House that this has not been an accident. Public policy of the very Liberal government that was in power during most of that time and of a subsequent government had a great influence in dragging down Canada in terms of standard of living. That is really what it comes down to: Our standard of living has declined to only 70% of that of the United States during that 25 year period. Not only that, even in this tough time of last year when the United States economy has been bumping along, it managed to squeeze out a 4% increase in productivity, again widening the gap with Canada.
Why do I raise that as an issue? I raise it because the fact of the matter is that the Canadian dollar is bumping along at about 62ยข. It has gone down dramatically during the time the government has been in power. The Canadian standard of living has really declined. One of the reasons for this is that as a home for direct foreign investment, Canada has seen that investment decline dramatically as a percentage of overall world investment during that same 25 year period.
In addition to that, Canadians are looking increasingly outside our borders, particularly to the United States, as a place to invest. Why would that be? One would think they would want to invest in their own country, but they are finding they cannot get the same rate of return or the rate of return that they need to invest in Canadian factories. We have too many problems for and too many barriers to business in Canada. The Kyoto accord, in my view, is just one more nail in that coffin. I suggest that the Liberal government had better take a long, hard look at the fact that we are going to be increasingly looked at as a backwater for international investment.
Just today, investment bankers in the United States, people who make their income doing analyses of where the best place is to invest, are saying that Canada, by entering into the Kyoto accord, will not be looked upon well for investment, particularly in the oil and gas sector. Of course the United States is not part of that same Kyoto agreement and we already have problems, as I have just said, in terms of barriers to investment in Canada, which existed before the Kyoto agreement. This is just one more thing that is going to be a very serious downturn for the Canadian economy in terms of overall investment.
As I said earlier, I think the Canadian oil and gas sector itself will be looking outside of Canada to invest, just as our mining industry did in the early nineties when land use and heavy taxation drove our mining industry into countries such as Chile. I was there a few years ago. We have something like $8 billion to $10 billion of Canadian mining investment in Chile. Why is that? The companies found that they could not make a good rate of return in Canada, that there were too many barriers to investment.
We have Premier Klein of Alberta travelling to New York talking to investment bankers, I think today. How is he going to explain that the government is throwing up another barrier to investment? I heard him the other day saying that the former minister of finance would correct all that when he gets in, but no one knows where the former minister of finance stands. Every two weeks he has a different position.
I would think that investment bankers in New York looking to invest in the Canadian oil patch, for example, would be pretty nervous about endorsing a policy of a former minister of finance who now wants to be the prime minister of the country and who cannot tell us clearly where he stands on the issue. In fact, he was not even in the House today for the vote on closure, which I think is deplorable.
I want to wind up by saying that if an automotive plant were choosing to establish in Ontario or Michigan, where would it establish given the uncertainty that Kyoto provides for Canadians these days?