International Trade committee  On that score I would say three key things. First of all, small and medium-sized enterprises do export as part of the value chains of larger firms, so large firms are critical to the ecosystem of the Canadian economy because they enable small and medium-sized firms to export.

International Trade committee  Let me just say a few things. First of all, trade diversion is bad. Trade diversion means that there is an excellent producer of a product, a service, or an agricultural good, and because of tariffs or non-tariff barriers, those rules act as a diverting effect for the customer

International Trade committee  I put it as a scenario to the committee. We should always be aware that we are a relatively smaller country in these negotiations. Geopolitically, we don't possess the same military projections, the same literal raw power that the other members of this negotiation do. Those can c

International Trade committee  Canada has, I think, a very vigorous strategy toward Asia. Our people-to-people links are very strong. Increasingly, in addition to our first nations and our European heritage, we're becoming a more Asian country simply because of our excellent people-to-people links, education l

International Trade committee  On that specific study, no, but we're working with an economist, Dan Ciuriak, and, in fact, we'll be publishing in a few weeks what we see as another thought exercise, shall we say, which would be looking at what would happen if Canada, in fact, just unilaterally liberated all ta

International Trade committee  I think that's a great question. Our members cover all sectors of the economy, so it depends on the sector. For our agrifood exporters and energy producers that have resources they can't move to the region, other than through traditional forms of export, tariffs and non-tariff b

International Trade committee  Exactly.

International Trade committee  My feeling is that provinces are most concerned with the agreements that correspond to the composition of their exports. British Columbia, for example, has more than 50% of its exports.... Again, we're dealing with merchandise trade, and I think these are outdated numbers not r

International Trade committee  The logistics and ports remain critical no matter what trade agreements Canada concludes.

International Trade committee  Sure, absolutely.

International Trade committee  Thanks. I'll say two things. I think, first of all, that broad consultations are essential. The CCCE, for example, firmly supports the government's recent conclusion of the South Korea free trade agreement. Not all CCCE firm members are in agreement about that. Some of our auto

International Trade committee  First and foremost, our 150 members are responsible for the vast majority of Canada's exports and R and D, so they're already there. The key is getting more Canadian firms there. The key is getting Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises to be aware of those opportunities. In

International Trade committee  We have an agreement with each of these nations in the World Trade Organization negotiations, the multilateral trading systems, and in many respects I think our first preference would be to see the World Trade Organization Doha Round negotiations create common rules so we have ma

International Trade committee  Since we don't know what the agreement is going to look like, it's hard to do projections but certainly that could be modelled, based on various options.

International Trade committee  They could move a lot more people, 800 million people potentially, in the region. Cities that require advanced transportation solutions...we're seeing, of course, many more regional airports, so when it comes to the Bombardier CSeries, for example, and other aircraft, these are