It's a very good question.
As I mentioned in response to the previous question, when we look at what EDC is doing, it's clearly a major vehicle for support to Canadian companies to engage in “integrative trade”, as you call it, or global supply chains. But you can also look at the Business Development Bank of Canada as a domestic instrument of the Government of Canada to support Canadian companies that need equity and are trade focused.
We are combining the work of EDC, and we're ensuring that they work in collaboration with BDC. We're ensuring that the Canadian Commercial Corporation is working with them. We're ensuring that DFAIT, the department, is shaping its approach to trade and investment.
We are in effect becoming Canada Inc. Canada Inc. is not only out there banging on doors and trying to sell Canadian companies' goods and services. Canada Inc. is about helping them to become global competitors and global managers of supply chains, getting into strategic partnerships in a way that's going to be good for wealth creation here in Canada.
You can take the approach that all outsourcing and offshore are bad. But if you go too far down that slippery slope, you're going to find that if you discourage and don't support some amount of that, but not complete outsourcing and offshore, and if you don't have an optimum amount of offshore and the use of lower-cost production capacity from elsewhere, you will find that companies will start to die. I can tell you that I would rather have a company that has a good, strong, vibrant high end here in Canada, with growth prospects in the global economy, than one that's dead.
It's the kind of thing we're talking about. We're increasingly finding a small reversal in what was a fairly strong trend towards offshore. Companies are now starting to see that you need the balanced blend of North American presence—and I again underscore North American and not only Canadian—and offshore presence. When you put it together in that way, you can become very successful globally.
In small and medium-sized businesses, it's critical for them because they don't have the tens of thousands or the tens of millions of dollars that big corporations have for chief financial officers and all of the technical experts required to engage in commercial transactions in the international marketplace
Again, EDC and the government have to come in to support them when they don't have the capacity.