Natural Resources committee  I like this expression.

Natural Resources committee  The accelerated capital cost allowance is a tool to achieve another objective. It's not an objective in itself. As I said, I think the first thing you need to look at is if the current CRA rules actually reflect the life cycle of the assets they use in their sector. I know there

Natural Resources committee  If there's an issue of productivity in the oil sands sector, I would say that's probably a good tool to put in place if you want to increase productivity, because it goes to the heart of the kind of machinery you're using. It's quite a capital-intensive industry, so I would say t

Natural Resources committee  Productivity has to do with the number of outputs and the labour and the hours worked. If you have a low dollar, you can improve your productivity by having people working more, or by having more people working. When you are in an environment where the dollar is high and you nee

Natural Resources committee  One of our recommendations, again going through the tax system.... That's one tool to change behaviour: to tax or not tax, or to give a tax credit. One recommendation is to maybe start looking at a specific tax credit for labour training. We give tax credits in this country for

Natural Resources committee  Yes. The accelerated capital cost allowance is not that much a measure related to innovation, but to productivity. If you're talking about the ACCA, it's the classes of assets that are used for manufacturing and processing. It's a productivity measure that gives incentives for c

Natural Resources committee  That's a good question. In most of the industrialized countries, there is an amount of capital that is being held by companies for various reasons from uncertainty in the markets to.... We're expecting in some sectors a new wave of mergers and acquisitions, so some companies are

Natural Resources committee  For certain sectors it has a bonus depreciation of 50% more, so 150%. That's a temporary measure that was supposed to end this year, but in the fiscal cliff deal, they renewed it for another year. What the report says is that it doesn't agree with some of the statements from th

Natural Resources committee  Yes, there have been some, but since 1995 it's been quite stable in terms of the source of energy. The only change you've seen is electricity and natural gas. Electricity became a bit more important. But it's not like in the U.S., for example, where natural gas really grew becaus

Natural Resources committee  It's fine to have a feed-in tariff system and it's fine to promote certain types of energy, but if that means you're going to lose capital investments in manufacturing or in certain sectors, you need to reach that balance. You can't just see it from one angle; you have to see it

Natural Resources committee  Yes. That is the Management Issues Survey. It focuses on management issues in the manufacturing industry. After the changes to the R&D tax credit were announced, we wanted to see how the companies would react. It was still very early. The changes had not yet been implemented

Natural Resources committee  That measure will have the biggest impact, after the rate reduction. More than half of our members have capital expenditures in R&D for things like machinery. Some of our members who represent large companies—for instance, in the resource processing sector that often involves

Natural Resources committee  Very well.

Natural Resources committee  You're right. I would say there is a similar point to be made about productivity as well. We focus a lot on the machines. We don't focus much on the people who will actually maintain and operate the machines. I would say it's the same thing as having a very fuel-efficient car bu

Natural Resources committee  It's a good question. Investment in any type of machinery and equipment, imported or not, is definitely a good thing. I don't have the numbers to see how much is imported versus made here, but we do have a pretty strong manufacturing sector of machinery and equipment in Canada. W