Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I see a number of new faces around the table at this meeting, so by way of a brief introduction, Forest Products Association of Canada is the national voice for Canada's wood, pulp, and paper producers. It's an industry in Canada that accounts for about 12% of Canada's manufacturing GDP. We directly employ 230,000 Canadians and we are the economic lifeblood for over 200 communities from coast to coast in this country.
I almost have to check myself now. This is the third or fourth time I've been invited to appear before this committee, and I have to make sure that my ego doesn't get too out of control and realize that it's not about me. I may be an interesting witness, but as I'm sure the committee has been finding out, every time one of these free trade deals gets signed or is sort of in the process of being negotiated, Forest Products pop up. The reason for that is that an enormous portion of what we produce in Canada is sent abroad. In fact, we're the number one forest products exporting nation in the world. We send about $24 billion worth of our product annually to markets outside of this country. Obviously, the lion's share of that goes to the U.S., but we're also very active in other markets around the world, specifically in Europe and Asia.
That's sort of a brief introduction. I've also bored this committee before, but maybe I'll spend a little bit of time saying that this industry, as many parliamentarians are more than familiar with, has faced some very challenging times over the past couple of years. We're emerging from those challenges, and one of the keys, as we look forward to ensuring a strong, stable industry in this country that will continue to support the jobs that we support, is to expand and diversify existing and new markets around the world. It's in that context that these types of free trade agreements are extremely important to the industry.
I'm sure you've already been given some sense of the numbers involved here, and they're not big. If you look at a $24 billion export industry, in our case, we are looking at a marketplace in Panama of only about $120 million worth of imports. Of that, we only have about $8 million, and that's broken down into two primary products: paper, which is the bulk of it, about $6 million; and about $2 million worth of wood products. That's a fairly insignificant number when you put it up against the $24 billion, but it's a very significant number for probably two mills in this country. I don't know which ones they are, but I do know that wood products come out of B.C. and the paper products that we ship to Panama come out of Quebec. I would guess, without knowing it, that they probably come from one or two mills. For those particular mills, this is a very important deal. And I'd like to remind parliamentarians that this is an important part of all these free trade deals. While they may not seem big on the surface, they are very important to a number of specific regions and specific mills.
This deal will get rid of up to about a 15% tariff on our products. It'll make us competitive with our main competitor, which happens to be, in this particular case, the U.S. They tend to supply the rest of the products to the Panama market. They've recently signed a free trade agreement with Panama, so this at least keeps our pace with them and allows us to compete with them. For that, we are very supportive of this deal. We were very supportive of the government continuing to sign and look for new free trade agreements in other markets, and it certainly will help to solidify our export potential going forward, and an important part of the industry going forward.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the committee for the time.
As always, I am prepared to answer your questions in French, if you wish. Thank you.