Natural Resources committee  Yes. In all of the ones I mentioned before about mass collaboration, Australia, Finland, and Sweden, it was initially started with a rather large government investment. Governments are pulling back a bit from their investment in it and letting the private sector take over there, but it was the government that started it to begin with.

Natural Resources committee  Certainly, and it goes back to my point again about the lack of collaborative spirit in Canada. We fancy ourselves as being quite collaborative, yet many of the differences are exaggerated. For example, lots of times when I was talking to people about this in Canada, they would say, “We can't do this because of federal-provincial relations.”

Natural Resources committee  It will be very short. Yes, you're right. There's actually quite a good chart in the report that comes from the Conference Board which shows that we trail all the other resource producers on the technology and knowledge exchange. So yes, we should be doing a better job. I would say that going back to collaborative research is one way to encourage that idea of extracting more value, building more value.

Natural Resources committee  Are you asking me that question?

Natural Resources committee  Could you clarify something?

Natural Resources committee  When you were talking about money being dead money, I wasn't sure what you were referring to.

Natural Resources committee  I'm thinking about that in terms of monetary policy. I think that the message I heard from a lot of people is that the government should definitely stay away from trying to pick winners and losers, so it really shouldn't be trying to encourage a particular industry, whether that's a value-added industry or building on it.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much, and thank you for inviting me. As you have heard, I am the Canada correspondent for The Economist, but I'm here today because of a report on natural resource policy that I researched and wrote last year for the Canadian International Council. It’s called “Nine Habits of Highly Effective Resource Economies: Lessons for Canada”.