Mr. Speaker, the government has placed an amazing emphasis on innovation, entrepreneurship, research and development. I am sure it will continue to do so judging by the remarks in Montreal by the member for LaSalle—Émard.
It is a key item especially when we look at the United States, our major trading partner, where we export 86% of our products. I think we need to diversify somewhat, but diversifying is easy to say and tougher to do.
With the Canada-U.S. exchange rate changing so rapidly, it has created some productivity issues of quite a sizeable amount. For many years we were actually decreasing the productivity gap between Canada and the United States. It has started to widen again and we need to deal with that, especially with the exchange rate on the dollar.
We have to look at the United States as well. While the U.S. has increased its productivity, its job creation and jobs record does not even come close to the superb performance of the Canadian economy. This is something we must be mindful of as well.