I guess I was not supposed to mention that, Mr. Speaker.
I do want to deal with the issue. The record really needs to be clarified in response to the member's question. I did not blame Canada for September 11 at all. All I said was that there is a new reality after September 11. The Americans are a lot more concerned about their security and they will be moving to tighten up that security. Whether Canada is part of the package of tightening it up or not depends on us.
I do blame the Liberal government and the present administration for not cooperating and not working with the United States on the security issue as much as it should. Any possible slowdown at the border that results from the U.S. tightening security and putting systems in place that may slow down cross-border flow in Canada is a real problem for Canadian businesses that cross the border. There is about $1.5 billion in two-way trade a day, but clearly we are a major beneficiary of exports to the United States. That is what I am talking about.
The Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States must have a working relationship to discuss those kinds of issues. Because it is such an integrated North American market, we better hope that we are part of the solution and not part of the problem in addressing security issues.
In terms of the Canadian dollar, I was saying that the Liberal government has used the low Canadian dollar as a crutch. I think there are records of the Prime Minister who, 10 or 15 years ago, was talking about a deliberate policy of a low Canadian dollar. In addition to that, I was saying that there have been some major studies done, especially by the industry committee. My colleague from Edmonton Southwest is a member of that committee. We have found that Canada's position in terms of competitiveness and productivity has been only about 80% of that of the United States. Witness after witness who came before the committee talked about the need to get those productivity levels up. However, they also talked about the need for major tax cuts to allow that to happen.
Now that the Canadian dollar has started to rise, I said that this should be a good news story for us. For some industries it is, but a large part of our export industry cannot stand the Canadian dollar rising that much unless there is a corresponding decrease in the cost of production. A major part of that is corporate and personal tax rates and things like payroll taxes, including the capital tax. I know cuts were introduced, but it is a five year phase-out. We need to accelerate the corporate tax rate cuts that were introduced in budget 2000 and we need to accelerate the phase-out of the capital tax.
In terms of jobs, the Canadian economy had been rolling along pretty strongly, but I believe that there is a lag time between good times and bad times in terms of the Canada-U.S. economy. It seems to me that the U.S. economy has been on the rocks for about a year and a half and we are just starting to feel the effects of that in Canada. The Canadian dollar is appreciating as a result of the U.S. dollar going down not just against Canadian currency but against all currencies worldwide. I believe part of the reason is because of its current account deficit of over $500 billion.
As long as the Americans were attracting investment, especially into their information technology sector--in the United States that was such a big sector--it did not really hurt them, but that sector has cooled off substantially. Now the current account deficit is a big problem for them. I believe that the U.S. administration is not unhappy about seeing its dollar depreciate against other currencies, the Euro, for example.
Canada has seen an appreciation against the U.S. dollar of about 17%. Whether that will be sustained or not, I do not know, but if it is, the point I was making is that Canada must recognize that there is a substantial part of our economy that needs some major tax relief to correct the fundamentals and allow the Canadian dollar to rise to be a good news story for us.