Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to our witnesses.
The part of your presentation on resources is music to my ears, because that's certainly something we have been pushing for, for some time. We have a fundamentally dysfunctional trade strategy when we look at the underresourcing that's taking place.
I just want to cite some figures, because Ms. Harrison mentioned the $83 million in trade with Jordan now. Unfortunately, in virtually every case, we sign these free trade deals and that's actually the high water mark.
I'll give you some examples. On Costa Rica, in the year we signed and implemented the trade agreement, we were exporting $77 million worth of products to Costa Rica, and last year it was $73 million. So over that period of time our exports went down.
Chile as well was $434 million in 1997, and 10 years later we had gone from $434 million to $433 million.
If we look at Israel over a six-year period, we went from $278 million to $239 million.
With the United States, we went from $237 billion in 1995 to $235 billion.
In each case what we've seen is we've signed these trade agreements--and in EFTA and Peru, of course, my colleagues are aware that there has been a marked decrease even in the first year.
So there is obviously something fundamentally wrong when we sign these trade deals and our exports to those markets go down. You have referenced some of the issues. We don't have enough on-the-ground people. I've met trade commissioners who say that under this government they have to pay for a cup of coffee for a client out of their own pockets.
There seems to be a starving of resources on exports, which belies the image the government puts forward of somehow wanting to encourage an export strategy and a value-added strategy. It's simply not the case. The figures don't lie.
I'm wondering what you would propose in terms of investments to actually stimulate the export industry. Putting aside a free trade agreement and whether or not it deals with human rights and the environment, just for a moment talking about an export-driven strategy, what kinds of resources do you believe we would need to actually put in?
Is it similar to Australia, where they spend half a billion dollars on product promotion? Is it similar to the United States or the European Union, where they spend over $100 million just in one sector alone? Is the overall investment of $13 million for worldwide product promotion enough? I would suggest clearly it is not.