I think, Monsieur Cardin, you've pointed out the advantages of looking beyond high-level trade negotiations to find out how to support the actual activities of businesses in international markets. You are right to underscore the importance of EDC, CCC, and CIDA in this regard.
Mike and I both experience situations like, “Oh, gee, we're going to do a new round of trade negotiations with whatever country”, or “We're going to take a look at the WTO, so can you bring a group of your members together so we can talk about this?” And we go out and ask how many members are interested in talking about it. The problem is, it's really hard to get anybody interested in these broad policy issues.
On the other hand, if we were to announce a meeting about the EDC's adoption of an innovative new line of financing that would address some of the issues facing businesspeople in China, there would be no problem at all in getting companies to attend.
Companies deal with real business issues. That's why I think looking at what EDC, CCC, or CIDA does is extremely important. We must continually make sure that their services back up the needs of Canadian business.
A couple of years ago, we were getting ready for another ED Act review. This was ten years ago, when nobody looked at what the needs of Canadian business would be over the next ten years, and whether EDC was prepared to meet those needs. We spent a lot of time kind of looking backwards at previous problems.
We need to make sure that the activities of agencies like EDC, CCC, and CIDA reflect the changing needs of Canadian businesses operating internationally.
Monsieur Cardin started off by talking about regulatory differences around the world. That is a problem—the various labour and environmental standards that exist throughout the world.
It is important to have an integrated approach between the activities of CIDA and our policies on business development or trade. We have a development agency that should be looking at how to assist countries around the world in improving their environmental and labour standards, while making sure that Canadian business plays an active role in that process.
I'll give you an example of something I think worked really well. We come out with some really great ideas. After the Kyoto earthquake, Canada was one of the first to offer aid, bringing in prefabricated houses. This is one reason our prefabricated housing manufacturers do so well in exporting to Japan today.
In the tsunami a couple of years ago, the Australians were looking at doing something to help in Indonesia. They said, “Let's learn from the Canadians, but let's do it better. What can we do as a government that's really going to be helpful to Australian industry?” So the Australian Ministry of Industry, Science, and Resources, together with AusAID and the manufacturers' and homebuilders' associations, got together and said, “We're going to set up a contest to build a $100-dollar home, and it's going to meet these recommendations—building standards, Internet connections, electrical connections, and so forth”. They not only did it within six months, but they got the cost of the home down to $50.
Now the Australian industry has a modular home with new building materials that they can export around the world. In getting their act together, they looked at the problem, asked themselves how they could work together to solve it, and aligned their domestic, financing, and development programs.
We always seem to be caught in discussions at a very abstract level. Then, when it comes to actually trying to get together to do something, we all throw up our hands and nothing seems to be done.
I think we have a lot to learn from other countries, such as Australia, who, frankly, learned from us a long time ago but were able to actually carry things out.