Finance committee  I'm worried that you won't get nearly as much take-up within the two-year window as you would like to see simply because the big investments, the most important investments, take more than two years to get done.

Finance committee  There is no question. For anything that is a driver of research, obviously, it will take time, first of all, to generate the discoveries, and second, to allow the discoveries to move into the marketplace in terms of new products and processes. If I may just step back quickly to the accelerated writeoffs for manufacturing equipment, I think if the government chose to extend the temporary writeoff for a longer term, the impact would be more than incremental.

Finance committee  Municipal taxation matters too. The fact is, when companies are assessing Canada's attractiveness as a place to invest, they're looking at the total tax burden. We actually have a research project under way right now, which we're hoping will give us a better picture of the tax situation at all three levels of government and how they add up.

Finance committee  I think the pressure to invest has been there. We've had five years of the dollar going up, and each year it's been a problem. The higher it goes, the more pressure there is for companies to invest. At the same time, I think as both of the other witnesses pointed out, when it goes up extremely fast, you end up with a situation where the pressure to invest is extremely high but the ability to invest goes down because you're not making any money.

Finance committee  I think there is absolutely no point in trying to predict short-term currency movements. Statistically, it's about the closest thing to a random walk that exists. But when you've seen a steady appreciation over a five-year period, I think it recognizes the structural differences that have emerged between how well we have managed our economy and how badly I think the Americans have managed aspects of theirs.

Finance committee  I'll do my best, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to appear and discuss the impact of the Canadian dollar and its appreciation on our economy. It's only a few years ago, it seems, that we were worried about the dollar being too low. That weakness reflected our precarious fiscal state, low commodity prices, and other factors.

International Trade committee  I'll try to answer briefly, Mr. Chair. First of all, I think the SPP has been a very open process. It's been public from the day it was announced. Governments, as far as I can tell, have welcomed thoughts from all sectors of society. The establishment of the North American Competitiveness Council a year ago was reflective of the fact that leaders felt they would benefit from particular advice from people who had particular expertise on one set of issues within the security and prosperity partnership.

International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, I think the steel industry is an example of an early leader in the whole process of North American companies working together. Long before the SPP, the steel sector was ahead of the pack in figuring out how to make economic integration work for Canadians and work for Americans as well.

International Trade committee  That's the whole question with this preclearance facility. The question is, on whose ground are you standing, and therefore what constitutional requirements have to be respected, and so on? One of the early issues that had to be dealt with was the question of whether border guards could or should carry guns while on this preclearance terrain.

International Trade committee  I think you're right. The pilot project was designated for the Buffalo crossing area, and obviously the fact that it has been held up for so long since the original smart border accord is very frustrating, not only because it's holding up efforts to deal with infrastructure and congestion at that crossing but because we need the pilot projects under way and completed in order to spread the process of land preclearance to the other major border crossings as well.

International Trade committee  I have to say that my knowledge on this file is limited. There are negotiations ongoing at this time, as I understand it, so obviously I don't know what's being said at the table. As I understood it, as of, say, the beginning of the week, the outstanding issue dealt simply with the question of how to deal with people who approached an American officer at a preclearance facility, were chosen for secondary questioning, and chose not to proceed.

International Trade committee  I think e-manifest is an excellent example of the very practical approach that members of the NACC from all three countries are strongly in favour of. If you look at some of the recommendations and discussions dealing with the movement of goods across borders within North America, and goods into North America as well, the conversion from paper to electronic products is clearly a critical element of that.

International Trade committee  If I may, we really only looked at the food and agriculture part of the agenda within the context of the regulatory priority. In other words, when members of the NACC established their priorities for their first year, they looked at border facilitation, they looked at regulatory cooperation, and they looked at the energy sector.

International Trade committee  If I may, I will speak very plainly on the issue of water. The NACC did not consider water as an issue at all; it was not a subject of discussion and not a subject of any of the recommendations made. The area on which the NACC chose to focus was energy, specifically. Frankly, the vast majority of the discussion about energy dealt with issues within Mexico.

International Trade committee  Specifically, there was a reference in the media this morning to a meeting that has nothing to do with the North American Competitiveness Council or, for that matter, with my council. So I'm not aware of what's on the agenda or who's there. It's not part of the official process.