Mr. Speaker, I will respond to my hon. colleague's question in two respects.
The first thing I would note is, yes, we could lower the percentage of our natural resource exports. We would do that by cutting the prices. I do not know why any government would encourage its citizens to lower the price for the goods that they are selling. That does not make sense. One of the reasons that the percentage of raw materials has gone up in our trade is because their value has gone up. More money is flowing into Canada for the same barrel of oil and for the same tonne of potash.
The second thing I would note, which I am sure my hon. colleague understands coming from this region, is that the natural resources industry is a high-tech industry. Drilling for oil or developing a new mine needs vast amounts of engineering intellectual capital, be it with computer science design, mine design or various other technologies.