International Trade committee  We analyze the impact of the free trade agreement on both Canadian imports from Korea and from the world and on our exports to Korea and to the world. In terms of the bilateral trade balance with Korea, there is an improvement in this particular analysis largely because, as Ian mentioned, Korean tariffs are higher than Canadian tariffs.

International Trade committee  Is there an ideal exchange rate? The first point is that Canada has a market-determined exchange rate that reflects the demand for the Canadian dollar from a wide variety of sources and the supply of the dollar as well. The bank, of course, focuses on price stability in Canada as its main policy objective and not on a specific level of the exchange rate.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To add to what Tony said, once you've got the estimate of the trade flow, there's the question of the estimate of the trade barrier with goods. It's typically a tariff, but it can also be a non-tariff barrier. For goods, we typically have fairly good tariff-equivalent measures of the barrier, but when we get into services and investment, then we have very poor-quality information on the barriers to services trade or to investment flows, so you need both the measure of the trade flow and the measure of the barrier.

International Trade committee  John Baldwin at Statistics Canada has been very active in estimating the impact of trade on the economy, and on productivity in particular, but also in terms of the performance. A firm that becomes an exporter, in John Baldwin's finding, becomes substantially better in all aspects of firm performance, including productivity, research and development, higher wages, and so forth.

International Trade committee  “Chur-ee-yak”.