Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. I'm pleased to be here to participate in this committee's study on the Canadian RMB trading centre. I'm also honoured to be joined here today by my colleagues from the Department of Finance, Export Development Canad

Finance committee  It certainly is.

Finance committee  No, it doesn't. The hub is virtual. If I could describe the end result which I use with a lot of our clients and internal people, we would like for Canadians, for commercial purposes, to be able to walk into any branch of their financial institution of choice in Canada, and to ha

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  It's the Chinese supplier to the Canadian retailer, as in my example. There are many other types of examples, but basically we're estimating it at 5% to 8% on average as far as what Canadians who have negotiated ongoing contracts with Chinese suppliers are concerned. What we've d

Finance committee  It was there before.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  We would consider it offshore.

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  Commercial aspects, yes. From an investor aspect we look at Luxembourg as one of the hubs. That RQFII component that Mr. Chilcott spoke of is one that was not there before. We are seeing investor usage as well as increased commercial, which is much easier to get out heads around.

Finance committee  That was the first. Correct.

Finance committee  Absolutely. Tourism is certainly one of the more visible areas of improvement that we're able to see. The other examples would fall within the lumber industry, the fisheries industry, oil and gas. Obviously, we can witness the heavy set of demand by the Chinese economy for some

Finance committee  I'd like to point back at the Luxembourg example, because right now we do not have the RQFII program running here today. We have experienced many professional investors requesting more information about that. As these investors, again, professional investors, look to diversify th

Finance committee  This was interesting because this came up in conversation in terms of where the hub is to be located, and it was a bit of a misconception. With the hub being virtual, anywhere across Canada, we do expect, from greater economic development and greater competition for Canadian firm

Finance committee  Yes. Particularly for the small and medium-sized enterprises, I think the ability to collect and warehouse RMB in a bank account here in Canada is going to be the most advantageous component. Right now they cannot do that. They have to make one payment at a time in a spot transa