Finance committee  When you think about it, adult unemployment in this country is below 6%.

Finance committee  The adult unemployment number.

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  But it's at an historically low level. You could argue about that level. I think the number I cited was that almost all of the growth in the last four years has been in jobs over $20 and especially over $30 an hour. I look at data like that and I just think, how can you tell me job quality is the worst ever?

Finance committee  I really resist the idea that resources and manufacturing are in opposition to each other in this country.

Finance committee  Remember too that our manufacturing sector has changed over the last decade quite significantly. Clothing is gone. The forestry-based industries—lumber, pulp and paper—are not coming back to anywhere near the level they used to be. There have been structural shifts. What has replaced them is....

Finance committee  Or important parts of it move in line. Of course, there's still a very important auto industry, and industries that benefit from the lower dollar and the pick-up in the U.S. economy. It's just not as big a part of our manufacturing industry as it used to be.

Finance committee  I agree with that, and would add that I think your perception is based on what happened before 2008. There was a reluctance to invest because a lot of industries were basically going out of business, in clothing, paper, and so on. Then, of course, there was the big recession in 2008-09.

Finance committee  One other thing is that I wouldn't expect as strong a response now as before 2008, because one way manufacturing survived and adapted to the high dollar over the last decade was that they oriented away from U.S. export markets and towards supplying energy industries out west. That demand is not going to be as strong, obviously.

Finance committee  I'll take a stab at it, being a statistician. Statisticians love these industries in which you have a small number of producers. Basically, it's an oligopoly. The dream industry for StatsCan is the auto industry. Survey six industries and you have a census. These are large firms.

Finance committee  Totally.

Finance committee  I'll jump in. The oil sands have 30-year to 40-year production. You and I could start a business for shale oil. For $1.5 million to $2 million, we have our little fracking operation going. That money can be turned off pretty quickly. With oil sands, you're talking about billions of dollars committed and the investments are all made up front.

Finance committee  Craig would like to say something.

Finance committee  I didn't mention them because I didn't think the issues were as large for the federal government as the Alberta government. On the idea, for example, of Alberta potentially adopting a sales tax or making better use of its heritage fund, the situation would seem to call for a much more...I don't want to use the word “dramatic”, but a much more fundamental response from the Alberta government.

Finance committee  I think that's more likely to be your better source of that, because they're going to ask where you earned this money. That's going to be reported by the employer and that's going to be different in the province of residence.