Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I just want to say at the outset that it is the fourth time they've announced the tax information exchange agreement negotiations with the United States, as you well know, and it has now been eight years. Every time there is a little bit of pressure to get it through the U.S. Congress, the Panamanian government announces that they're negotiating another tax information exchange agreement. But for eight years, nothing—nothing—has resulted from those negotiations. So I think we should take that off the table as any sort of credible point made about negotiations on tax information.
I want to start with Ms. Nott and Ms. Osmond. I've been on the trade committee now, along with Mr. Cannis, for six years, and we often have people come forward, well-intentioned people, saying that signing these FTAs will lead to an increase in exports.
The problem is that when you actually look at the constant dollar value of our exports to those markets after we sign these FTAs, they actually decline, and they have in every single case.
In just one example, Costa Rica, there were $77 million in Canadian exports to the Costa Rican market before we signed the FTA. Last year, it was $73 million. So we went from $77 million to $73 million, in constant dollars, which is why the Minister of International Trade often will use current dollars to try to hide the fact that in real terms what's happened is a decrease in exports to those markets.
I'm wondering if either of you have any comments, because we have a pretty dysfunctional trade policy in that regard. What would you like to see our government doing to actually enhance the resources put in place to support our exporters.
I'll just give you another example. I was meeting with the trade commissioner in South America, who told me that they didn't even get the budget to buy a cup of coffee for potential clients. There's just no money available from this government. We spend about $13 million worldwide in Canadian product and service promotion. Australia spends half a billion. So there's a huge problem here. Would you like to see the Canadian government actually put its money where its mouth is and provide more support on the ground for Canadian exporters?