Thank you.
Has any diversification happened yet? It's difficult to say. Part of the challenge in assessing that is that the Indo-Pacific strategy was officially launched a year ago. While the Minister of Trade and others are very fond of saying that Canadian trade is higher than ever and we've been trading more than ever, the reality is we know for a fact that Canada's increased trade since 2020, since the pandemic, is the result of inflation, not increased volumes of trade. This is in the Global Affairs Canada 2023 report—from Global Affairs itself.
We know that higher prices are fuelling Canada's increased trade with the United States and others. If you're looking at any figures, even a $2-billion increase or a $20-billion increase, first you have to ask yourself if it's the result of prices or increased volumes of trade. We know volumes of trade are actually down and have not recovered.
There are a couple things we can do that are important. First, just because we don't trade very much with the Indo-Pacific doesn't mean those exercises aren't important, particularly if they help us build relationships for the long term for other reasons.
We're talking about wanting to sign an FTA with ASEAN, but Global Affairs Canada's own assessments say that if we were to sign a deal, it would increase trade exports by Canada by $2.7 billion per year. It's frankly a rounding error when you think of the relationship with the United States. This $2.7 billion is great, but it's still not a huge amount of trade. If that helps us improve our relationships and helps both sides, who each have a respective elephant in the room, think about ways to co-operate with each other without always thinking about China or the United States, I think that's good.
Middle power is finding ways to be the fabric that keeps the global trading system together, where the two big powers aren't necessarily in the room or guiding the direction of that. I think that can be a really positive contribution we can make.