International Trade committee  I think your questions form the basis of the committee meeting, but they also form the basis of my everyday job, to try to look at where we're going to be in five or ten years--that's what I have to worry about--although I think we've got a pretty good service today. First of all, the Internet only gives you information; it doesn't give you intelligence.

International Trade committee  I was just going to say that we would make this available through Mr. Emerson, or the parliamentary secretary Mr. Menzies, I guess.

International Trade committee  Mr. Julian, I'd want to look at the statistics. I can't dispute you...I just don't have that here. But on the diversifying of markets, I think that's exactly what we're trying to do. We recognize that the U.S. is the most important market. We recognize overwhelmingly--as Mr. Cardin was talking about with the small and medium-sized enterprises--that many Canadians regard the U.S. as their backyard, so we have a volume of companies to serve the U.S.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  Thank you. I have two comments. First, I can provide you with a good demographic picture of the trade commissioner service. I'll supply it through the chair or the clerk. Second, in the last few years we have tended to recruit people who have some industry experience rather than those coming right out of university.

International Trade committee  A few years ago we had organizations such as Team Canada Inc., where we tried to organizationally bring other government departments together. It seems now that other government departments are interested in particular markets. Instead of this broad-brush “we're interested in exports”, people are interested in different parts.

International Trade committee  That's a good question. The question is on resources. Regardless of the government in power, you will always find trade commissioners saying they would like more. Is it realistic to expect governments to continually give you more without results, without a careful look internally?

International Trade committee  We have officers, as I said, in 140 places around the world who have knowledge of that market. The issue is that Canadian companies sitting in Calgary or Moose Jaw or Rimouski want information, and they're not quite sure where to go. If you just go online and hit Chile, well, you might get chili sauce, chili powder, or chili pepper, but you don't get a lot about what the market in Chile is like.

International Trade committee  Minister Emerson has stressed performance measurement as being the key to how we can do redeployment and how we can decide what services are best offered. So in fact the success of the Canadian company is what we measure our success against, in a way. We can't make a sale, so sometimes we can just provide the information and get them to that point.

International Trade committee  I'm the assistant deputy minister for trade, and we have an assistant deputy minister for human resources, but our two deputies, Len Edwards and Marie-Lucie Morin, held the executive committee retreat two weeks ago. At the top of the priorities was to look at what we can do quickly to make a difference.

International Trade committee  That's a fair statement. By the end of March each branch had to have a human resources plan, and the department now has a human resources plan. We have to implement the parts that can be done now.

International Trade committee  Merci. You have put this in the right context: companies of different sizes, what do they need, what can they expect? Clearly, a larger company needs one level of support and the SMEs need something else, but all of them are looking for local market knowledge and intelligence, contacts.

International Trade committee  That's a difficult question to answer quickly and succinctly. In 2003 there was a recognition that the international commerce game was changing in global value chains towards an emphasis on results. So many of the decisions made about how government was organized--which was an entirely political discussion and entirely at the call of the Prime Minister with regard to machinery--were very much centred around how we get better results.

International Trade committee  There were no job losses on the trade side related to that integration. It gives us a different structure, but our minister, Minister Emerson, and our deputy minister are very clear that there are goals and objectives on the trade side, and it's how we tie the political side into those goals and objectives that makes a difference.

International Trade committee  The best answer I can give you is that on a regular basis we're taking a look at posts around the world and how they perform and what their role is. For some posts for which we may have had a rationale or raison d’être a few years ago, maybe the rationale is less. We constantly evaluate.