Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ms. Maloney, for coming out today. I find this discussion really quite interesting. To follow up, I think you mentioned that parents say “Go out and get a university degree.” I think that's true. Within our family, had we said that to all of our kids, those who now have degrees wouldn't have them if they hadn't had the opportunity to go to college and develop those skills early.

Industry committee  How do you follow through with that from the academic part, in terms of that marketing, with the industry? How do you work with the industry to promote what you need in skilled people within the trades?

Industry committee  I don't want to be left with the idea that you only react when there's a problem. As part of a strategy for developing, how is your communication with industry so you can make some predictions about problems, not just today but in five to ten years because of demographics and--

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate all the comments and I appreciate the chair and people working together on this. I'd simply raise the concern that I've raised before. We started this back in April, I guess, and we looked at what we wanted to prioritize at that time. Telecommunications was on the table, obviously, and there was unanimous consent, after a lot of debate, that we move away from that and go to manufacturing, because we all wanted to make sure that whatever we decided to do, we wanted to do a good and thorough job on a report that would end up in front of the House.

Industry committee  I think one of your comments was that the manufacturing wages are 28% higher than the average wage in--

Industry committee  Okay. Then you say your productivity is $1 invested for $3 returned, where in some cases other ones are quite a bit higher. You say we've lost 250,000 jobs in manufacturing. We've had the lowest unemployment in many years, and you're saying they are jobs that don't pay very well.

Industry committee  I know what we can do. I'm asking what you will do. You have 28% higher wages and a productivity problem.

Industry committee  In comparison to some, you do. Then we have a strong economy. We have low unemployment, but we're losing jobs. I'm just wondering what you're going to do that will help us in terms of our resources. Am I over?

Industry committee  Thank you very much. An interesting comment was made earlier by Mr. Georgetti that he would have supported universal day care. We put in a universal child care program for everyone. I'm just wondering in your party why it would be so good to have a program proposed that 5% to 10% of people would have used and that would not have addressed weekends, shift work, and holidays.

Industry committee  So they use theirs, and some other countries maybe beyond them use it as an economic development issue, rather than as basically a component of their tax regime. You're basically telling us that they have higher corporate tax than we have and lower depreciation or capital cost allowance than we have.

Industry committee  Am I out?

Industry committee  Oh, crumb! I was just going to say, then, that we've had pretty much every industry and manufacturing company in here talking about capital cost allowance and its importance and significance; that's all. I'm just wondering whether it is a collaborative consultation that we're having with the industry and your ministry about adjusting those.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, and thank you for coming out to our committee. Earlier in your presentation you talked about the capital cost allowance--what that actually means and the definition of it. One of the things you talked about was the useful life of an item. Can you tell me who defines that?

Industry committee  During these discussions that have come about and the concern about it...it's a whole review brought about not only by yourselves but by the industry and those within it. Do you know why it is different? When you look at capital cost allowance schedules there seems to be a wide variation.

Industry committee  To really help, I'm wondering what sorts of alliances you've built with the train companies--the CPs, the CNs, the whatevers of the world that are out there. It really makes sense to me then, if you have built-in efficiencies, including the capital cost. Then it's almost a no-brainer.