International Trade committee  Do we have an opinion?

International Trade committee  You're the negotiator, Kirsten...but I think that raising the standards internationally is always a good thing. As Kirsten said, not every partner in trade negotiations is equal. Some take more time and more effort than others, but from a business perspective, I think that predic

International Trade committee  It's a clear element of confidence for businesses when they know that there is that ability from the host country to abide by those rules. That's all I can tell you for that.

International Trade committee  I just have a—

International Trade committee  I don't want to say anything that minimizes the importance of trade agreements, but they only become valuable if our exporters actually do business abroad. That's where there is a flip side. You have a piece of paper that gives the predictability, but then it's a means to an end

International Trade committee  We're having ongoing conversations with a number of our federal colleagues, including Innovation, Science, and Economic Development because they are the ones that are the closest to us in terms of the microeconomic environment. You're absolutely right that many businesses succe

International Trade committee  Yes, it definitely does. It's a brand for Canada to have good corporate responsibility in terms of how companies behave, but also the whole suite of things that we do well, food security being one, is something that we should be advertising a lot more.

International Trade committee  It was just launched by Minister Freeland on January 5 and she did a really great job to get the excitement going. We already have 700 live applications. Some 200 have been approved or are in the process of being approved. In the next three weeks there will be a lot of attention

International Trade committee  Yes. We go and invest abroad. We actually do two things. One, we create wealth in Canada through our investment abroad. Also, we create sustainable economic development in those countries that are reliant on extractive production. On R and D, we're very good in terms of putting

International Trade committee  Keep going? You like my story. We haven't been very good at adopting technology, and I think it's something that companies need to do more of. The question then will become, what is the role of governments versus the role of the private sector to actually do something about that

International Trade committee  It's a difficult question to answer in regard to just making a list of the top three that we're good at. I look at the trade figures. We are very present in the extractives. We're very good at mining. I was just in South Africa at the Mining Indaba conference. We are good at that

International Trade committee  Maybe I can add a few points on the trade commissioner side. The last budget did provide us a top-up for the trade commissioner service, particularly for emerging markets, where companies have a harder time going. They do need a bit more hand-holding, not only to go and diversif

International Trade committee  It's early days. The road map that the former government had, which was called the global markets action plan—

International Trade committee  —GMAP is less than two years old, and therefore we're still looking at it. It hasn't really been decided how we're going to disseminate that information.

International Trade committee  This program was announced in budget 2015. Its intent is to support companies and share the cost of their international activities. For example if companies want to explore markets that they haven't yet explored and go to trade fairs, trade shows, explore local business opportuni