INDU Committee Report

In March 2009, the Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors began a study examining the impact of the economic crisis on certain Canadian industries, particularly the aerospace, energy, forestry, high-tech and manufacturing industries. The challenges facing these industries are numerous and onerous. Each industry faces a unique set of structural issues, but they all share the current overriding cyclical issue of an exceptionally deep global economic recession and a large contraction in credit and financing. For these industries, these cyclical issues are particularly acute because they compete in global markets and are, therefore, extensively dependent on export sales. Although Canada has been spared the full force of the global economic recession because of a very robust financial sector, the recession has hit other countries, notably the United States, extraordinarily hard. The United States is Canada’s largest export market and, in an increasingly globalized world, market demand problems in the United States often become industrial production problems in Canada.

The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology’s final report reflects a wide perspective on both structural and cyclical challenges facing the industries studied and on the potential solutions proposed by the witnesses.

We would like to thank all of the witnesses who appeared before the Subcommittee for their thoughtful and often candid remarks, as well as the members of both the Subcommittee and the Committee for their hard work on this study.

David Van Kesteren, M.P.
Chair of the Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors

The Honourable Michael Chong, M.P.
Chair of the Committee on Industry, Science and Technology