I'll ask Martha to comment on this as well, if she will. I highlighted this overseas employment tax provision because it's something, quite frankly, that I wasn't aware of myself.
Increasingly, we are looking at figures of perhaps $70 million in our trade to Jordan. But if you add the service component—in which I would include education, students studying in Canada, and so on—those numbers are probably double, at a minimum. It's certainly the case in most of the other countries in the region. But for Canadians who are involved in that side of the export equation, after a period of time—and I'm no expert in this—they have to decide whether or not they will sever their links with Canada from a tax point of view and become non-resident. That has enormous, not only personal considerations, but quite frankly, in my view, it has very considerable negative implications for Canadian exports.
In our tax regulations—and I'd be happy to send anyone who's interested a PowerPoint presentation that Ernst & Young put forward at one of our recent conferences—there are provisions for certain industries. Those, ironically, were set up when Bell Canada was establishing a telephone network in Saudi Arabia back in the 1970s and 1980s and thousands of Canadians were resident there. Those provisions allow for certain industries, including engineering companies, oil companies, and resource companies, to send their employees overseas and to receive a tax credit. I believe it's around $100,000. So they get a benefit for being abroad. Most other countries—I think all other countries, certainly the U.K., the United States, and others—have that provision in it.
But for Canadian firms—and education is a very good example; there are 950 Canadian educators in Qatar at the College of the North Atlantic. There could be more now. All those people are paying Canadian income tax, and in order for that enterprise, which has enormous positive implications for our relationship and our long-term economic future...we have a burden that makes us non-competitive with Australians, New Zealanders, and so on.
In my view, this is very much in the realm of this committee because these rules and regulations drive international trade now. Thank you.
Martha.