Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the committee for the invitation to appear again this year.
Our submission this year is not so much focused on recommendations but more on an approach of stay the course. There have been a number of significant developments over the last year that we are quite supportive of.
First and foremost, as a business community our success depends on being able to open up new markets and sell products, whether they be services, wireless communications, or manufacturing technology. So within that perspective, certainly the recent announcement of the new trade agreement with the European Union is a very significant advancement for the Canadian economy, particularly for us in the Waterloo region.
I'd like to quote a letter from an organization that Mr. Christie mentioned, the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters. The Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters wrote a letter to the premiers recently and the president and CEO of the CME, Jayson Myers, pointed out that this is a particularly important deal for Canada because it provides a market for Canada's advanced manufacturing products. It creates new markets and allows small and medium-sized businesses to develop new partnerships overseas and to help them commercialize new technologies and enter new markets.
That pretty well summarizes the position of our community and, I think, the business community across Canada. We'd like to congratulate Minister Fast and his staff for being able to finalize this agreement.
Second, as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has pointed out in some recent correspondence and media releases, this is probably a significant development in terms of future agreements, primarily with Pacific Rim partners, Korea and Japan as well. Again, it's important to keep that momentum going.
When we were here a year ago we recommended the extension of the FedDev Ontario agency, the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario. Again, we were quite pleased by Minister Flaherty's budget last March that extended that program for an additional five years, until 2019.
In particular, we are quite supportive of the $200 million that has been specifically allocated to advanced manufacturing. I know Minister Goodyear and his staff have been meeting with a number of manufacturers across southern Ontario this summer, gaining some consultations and feedback on how that program should operate. We look forward to that starting in April 2014. Again, we would like to commend Minister Flaherty and the government for recognizing the importance of the southwestern Ontario economy and particularly advanced manufacturing.
The third point I would like to briefly mention, which is what I focused on over the summer and in my brief submitted last August, is the area of workforce development and training, particularly for the manufacturing sector. If we're moving toward advanced manufacturing, where essentially we're looking at robotics machinery or highly advanced equipment to do the work that assembly lines used to do, these use advanced materials and are advanced products, and a specialized skill set is required for maintaining these operations.
Of course, we have seen reports from economists on Bay Street and the academic community who talk about productivity and efficiency. From the perspective of the manufacturing sector and a lot of businesses in our community, if the machinery is not working at an optimum level then we're not meeting our productivity and efficiency levels. Again, there is a requirement for having personnel trained to maintain and operate the equipment in advanced manufacturing.
We are supportive of the Canada job grant program to the extent that it identifies certain areas where there are significant job shortages and it will provide the assistance to people who want to move into those fields.
Thank you.