Trade is obviously extremely important to our members, but the issue that's critically important at this time is to diversify trade.
As we know, the U.S. economy has slowed significantly. But on a going-forward basis, I don't think we're going to be seeing very aggressive economic growth in the U.S. It's going to be moderate growth at best over the next five years at least. We need to diversify our trade away from the U.S., and Canadian businesses have been doing a lot to diversify trade.
Exports to the U.S. now count for about 70% of Canada's exports, which is significantly down from the 80% we're used to seeing.
We need to put a lot more emphasis in terms of aggressively pursuing free trade agreements with countries in Asia, but also to ensure that we have a successful conclusion to the European trade agreement. Tremendous benefits for Canada will stem from that.