Thank you
With respect to trade commissioners, first, I'm interested in the quality of our trade commissioners. What is their profile, their background? I'm sure you have statistics on their education and relative ages. On their linguistic competency, do they they speak English, French, and other languages? To what extent are they trilingual, quadrilingual? Second is the issue of the quantity of trade commissioners. Given the size and scope of the Canadian economy and the necessity to diversify our exports, it strikes me that 250 full-time trade commissioners, 350 overseas, is far below the numbers we'd actually require.
I would like you to answer both those questions: the quality, and whether it is realistic to say that we should be substantially investing in more on-the-ground trade commissioners in countries where we want to broaden our market access.