International Trade committee  I think you partly answered the question. We have a great community and a great story. We have great companies. We have great people already. People come to us for talent. People come to us to be partners. When we go abroad, we raise that as part of our arsenal, our tool kit. We do go to many of those places.

International Trade committee  Well, that's what I said earlier. We have an opportunity, probably second to none, because we now have the United States and the rest of NAFTA, Mexico, of course. We have CETA. We have all of these other agreements. We have a great tool kit. What we need to be able to do, though, is to create great champions.

International Trade committee  Well you can tell that. When I heard about this opportunity to come and talk to you I wanted to let you know we're very pleased with this. There are some things that might rumble from time to time in any community, but we think this is a fantastic opportunity. In fact, we want to take advantage of it by leveraging it for the next two years to come up with some strategies that we can take advantage of.

International Trade committee  You'll probably hear more on this from our colleague from BlackBerry who will talk more specifically about those tariffs. I haven't done the study of the tariffs themselves, but I understand they are an issue. I'd rather not go into the detail because I don't have that background.

International Trade committee  Yes. We've done a talent study or a strategy of how we can best keep the talent in the community. It's sometimes very difficult in a smaller community. There was a study done in the United States where the focus was on affordable housing, good transportation, and as they said, things to do.

International Trade committee  Obviously, the tech community at large would benefit. We also think we can grow in various targeted advanced manufacturing areas, including some of our clean tech and the activities around that, and data centres. There are opportunities for some of the lifestyle businesses that are there.

International Trade committee  Absolutely, and as I mentioned, we already had a meeting with what we call our ambassadors, our local ambassadors, who are mostly SMEs. We have a target in Germany; we have other regions of Europe we work with. With this committee, a structure of ambassadors, we've taken this notion that the Canada-EU CETA is so important that we need to develop a strategy of how to go forward with them.

International Trade committee  In some industries it is.

International Trade committee  Are you from London?

International Trade committee  You're asking at a very early stage.

International Trade committee  In. When I've travelled to India, China, and other places like that, some of the companies.... This not just for the Waterloo region. I used to be the head of Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance, and that issue was raised a number of times by companies that have branch operations and want to send in some of their people to help out.

International Trade committee  There are three cities and three mayors. There's one per city.

International Trade committee  At a local level, we will have focus groups and—

International Trade committee  You're misreading what our organization's about.

International Trade committee  Canada's Technology Triangle Inc. is a public-private partnership made up of the municipalities, the colleges and universities, and the private sector that make up the Waterloo region. We aren't a technology company. We are a public-private organization not very different from Invest Ottawa, which you're familiar with here.