Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
First of all, just to give you a quick description of AdvantageBC, we're an organization that has history going back to 1986, formerly known as the International Financial Centre, Vancouver. At that time there were two international financial centres established, one in Vancouver and one in Montreal, and the goal was to promote international financial activity to locate in those centres. Actually, if you look back a number of years ago, in 2008 Vancouver was ranked number 33 as a world financial centre. We set a goal, as the Government of British Columbia, to have that in the top 25 two years after the Olympics, in 2012. In fact, we hit number 17 that year, and in 2014 we actually came in at number 14, which I'll talk about a bit later in the presentation.
British Columbia has been a leader in promoting the use of the renminbi in North America. In fact, in November 2013, the Province of British Columbia became the first non-China government to issue a dim sum bond in the amount of 2.5 billion renminbi, and a year later in November of last year a second renminbi bond in the order or 3 billion renminbi was issued by the province. Interestingly, the only other government jurisdiction to have issued a dim sum bond was the U.K. in October of last year.
So, if you go back a year ago when people first started talking publicly about the prospect of Canada becoming a renminbi settlement hub, there was discussion in the media about how this could shape up to be an aggressive competition between Vancouver and Toronto as to where this hub should be located. It was actually our finance minister, Mike de Jong, who started to promote the idea of a pan-Canadian hub, one that wasn't there to be centred in any one particular city but in fact could serve Canada from coast to coast because, in fact, a renminbi settlement hub is not an address. It's not a building. It's a facilitation that really can be accessed from anywhere in the country, and in this case, because we're the only game in North America, anywhere in the Americas.
So our finance minister asked AdvantageBC to lead the private sector push to have Canada designated, and we worked very closely with the Toronto Financial Services Alliance to jointly promote Canada to have this designation. A working group was set up under my chairmanship in British Columbia and we built the case for how Vancouver could complement Toronto and the other centres in Canada to really make something that is greater than the whole of its parts.
What we find is that different centres in Canada have different strengths when it comes to renminbi settlement. Vancouver is known for trade finance. Calgary is known for inbound foreign direct investment into the western resources industries and Montreal is known for derivatives.Toronto is known for a broad range of other activities. But they complement each other very nicely.
In terms of Vancouver, not only do we have the strength in terms of trade finance but we also have the advantage of time zone. I think when you start looking at that 24-hour clock of commerce around the world, where renminbi trading is going to carry on 24-7, you have the end of the business day in Asia overlapping with a business day in Europe. But then there was a big gap as the Americas did not have that facilitation. So Toronto and Montreal overlap with the end of the business day in Europe, and the west coast overlaps with the start of the business day in Asia. You can wind up with that continuous service of renminbi settlement in real time by taking full advantage of the Canadian time zones that we have to fill that big gap that had existed in the world.
Canada has big strengths that we bring to the table in this file. We have the number one banking system in the world seven years running, according to the World Economic Forum. We have four cities in the top 30 in the rankings of global financial centres. We have Toronto ranked at number 11, Vancouver at 14, Montreal ranked number 18, and Calgary at number 27. I think we as Canadians don't recognize the strengths we have. I do.
I think the November 18 announcement was very important in a couple of respects. First of all, the People's Bank of China designated this settlement hub, the Canadian hub, as not just for Canada but they actually explicitly said that it was there to serve North America. In fact, we can serve all of the Americas through our Canadian financial institutions because we know there are no others in the pipeline that could establish settlement hubs elsewhere in the Americas any time soon.
The RQFII allocation is also important. It's an opportunity for us to service the Americas and to allow access for direct foreign investment into China using onshore renminbi through the RQFII allocation.
The bottom line, I think, is that Canada has a great story to tell when it comes to our international financial institutions. Being designated as the renminbi settlement hub for the Americas is a real opportunity. I think Canadian governments—federal and provincial—and the private sector have to be very proactive in reaching out and seizing that opportunity while it is before us.
Thank you.