Finance committee  First of all, the relationship I make with investment and capacity is not necessarily the value of the dollar; it's cash flow. If you have more cash flow, usually you drive more investment. Yes, it's true that a lot of equipment is imported, but at the same time, if you have ca

Finance committee  Yes, you're quite right. One of the answers I give when I get this question is that I don't know any exporters who don't have to import something to fabricate what they export. That being said, labour costs are usually the biggest costs, the biggest input in what you make. Lab

Finance committee  I'll give you a couple of very simple examples. One emerging field of workers that is required, especially in companies like, for example, Siemens, a German company in automation and software, is mechatronics. Mechatronics is a combination of electrical engineering, mechanical e

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I'm sure these two companies are highly R and D intensive if they export to the U.S.

Finance committee  What we've seen hurting companies across the board in manufacturing, as I said in my introduction, are the cuts to the research and development tax credit. In 2013-14 the tax credit went down from 20% to 15% for large corporations and the capital expenditure was eliminated from

Finance committee  There were ups and downs in terms of capital investment when the accelerated capital cost allowance measure was implemented by the previous government. Normally, in economics, when the rate of industrial capacity exceeds 80%, we expect to start seeing more significant investments

Finance committee  It's a big piece. With the drop in the oil price and the drop in activity, we've seen an impact on domestic sales in manufacturing. It does impact us. Many of our member companies, especially in southern Ontario, had started to look at becoming suppliers to oil and gas. Now they'

Finance committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, it was with great pleasure that I accepted your invitation, on behalf of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, to submit our recommendations to you in the context of your 2016 pre-budget consultations. I want to wish all of you an excel

Finance committee  It's very important. It's very important also especially for companies that are maybe headquartered outside this country. We have a lot of members where decision-making happens maybe in a boardroom in Connecticut, or somewhere else. I think it's the right message we need to send

Finance committee  There are other factors they hear about that are maybe more negative, such as high labour costs, stuff like that.

Finance committee  No, we never bothered asking them.

Finance committee  No, no.

Finance committee  They're hearing very good news about low taxes.

Finance committee  Right.