International Trade committee  Thank you. Thank you very much to all members of the committee. In starting today, I want to say thank you very much for having had the pleasure of reading your report and the comments from the different parties, because in fact it's how we can improve and how we can better me

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

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 in

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 e

International Trade committee  As you know, we closed four consulates late last year and early this year. We've looked at other posts that could be closed. Instead of saying “closed”, it would be better to say, “how would you do the job better?” So we're taking a look at that. There is no list that says we're

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 quick

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,

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 som

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 internal

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

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 exp

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. Card

International Trade committee  Yes.

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.