Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To answer the member's question, I would say that there is no problem with regard to data on physical products. The real problem involves trade in services and investments. If there is a difference between the statistics on imports prepared by Mexico and those on our exports, it is clear that the problem derives from the fact that some of our exports to the United States are destined for Mexico. We can rectify this inaccuracy with data on imports by Mexico.
As Mr. Ridgeway just said, it is quite clear that as regards products that are exported to Mexico, their statistics are more accurate than our statistics on exports. So we have a way of resolving that, and we know that this is a growing market for us. The trends are more important than the current statistics.
It's more important to know what the trend is than what the precise figure is. We know that our exports to Mexico are increasing and that our exports to Mexico are now not quite at the level of our imports from Mexico, but that gap has narrowed to some extent since NAFTA. So that's a useful piece of information. It helps us respond.
If I can just add a couple of thoughts, one thing that is true about Statistics Canada is that it does two things. It produces statistics that are mandated by law, and it also undertakes surveys and other work in cooperation with policy departments. There are a couple of projects that we are asking Statistics Canada to help us with at present. One is to map exporters to importers. In other words, as we see the new economy coming into place, and this responds to one of Mr. Bains' concerns, what is different? One of the things that's different is that the importer and exporter may be the same person. It's very important to know if a company is importing components and exporting, because then we can say it's almost more important for us to have a lower tariff on the import than to worry about somebody else's tariffs, because that business could move somewhere else if the company finds that we have high tariffs on parts.
A project that we're asking Statistics Canada to help us with is to see what exporters actually rely on imports in order to make their products competitive internationally, and how our trade policy can adjust to that. So Stats Canada does things like that.
Another thing we are asking Stats Canada to help us with is relating the impact of our trade commissioners abroad on the volume of trade with particular countries. Are there specific cases in which a company comes to the trade commissioner in a particular city and says, “How do I export to this market?”, and then follows up by increasing his or her exports to that market? So Stats Canada helps us to a great extent at a very micro level on these kinds of things, but they ask us to pay.