Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today.
I recognize some familiar faces around the table from my previous appearances, but this my first time here since being appointed EDC president.
I have just a few opening remarks; I'd rather focus on your questions. Please feel free to pose those questions either in English or in French.
Here is a brief introduction to EDC as a lead-in to how we interact with the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, if I may. Obviously EDC is Canada's official export credit agency. It's a crown corporation, but importantly, it's a commercial export credit agency, which means it's self-sustaining; it earns a profit each year. It provides trade finance and insurance services to Canadian companies so that they can grow their international business with lower risk.
“Commercial” is quite literal. It means that we price our services according to market prices, whether it's a loan or whether it's insurance. The profits we earn doing that, of course, are automatically folded into the government's fiscal statements. EDC pays a dividend to the government quite frequently and has cumulatively paid over $1 billion in dividends.
We also operate under what I call a partnership-preferred philosophy. This is in the sense of partnering with the private sector whenever possible so that we ensure we are complementing the private sector's own products and services in the marketplace, not stepping on its toes, crowding it out, or doing things that the private sector otherwise would do. To me this represents good basic policy-making. It means we're complementing the private sector in a way that allows the private sector to evolve through time and do, perhaps, more and more of the activities in that space as it develops its business. It allows the policy-maker to back away and do other things that therefore need doing.
If I could give you an illustration, last year EDC did approximately 1,000 new loans. I think the number actually, for the record, is 937. I hope I'm not misspeaking, Mr. Chair. Of those 937 loans, 86% were partnered with the private sector, so some of the risk was borne by the private sector, and the private sector institution was the face of the transaction with the exporting company. We think that's a very important way to operate.
EDC does a lot of facilitation of Canada's trade, but we also use our tools and our networks to create Canadian trade. There's an important distinction between those two things. It's in that space where we work most closely with the Trade Commissioner Service. We work very closely with it every single day, both abroad and domestically. This activity is highly complementary between the two organizations. We're combining market intelligence with networks, with relationships with foreign companies or with domestic companies, and combining all those things together in a matchmaking kind of process, which means more Canadian trade tomorrow. Along that way, eventually someone may need a financial solution, and that's where EDC brings comes into play, but a lot of the front end is done very intensively in collaboration with the Trade Commissioner Service.
I'll give an example and then I'll stop. EDC will build a financial relationship with a big foreign buyer in a country like, let's say, India. We'll establish that relationship first of all in a collegial manner, but eventually in a financial manner, and in exchange for an understanding that the foreign buyer will build its Canadian trade linkages—in other words, it will add more Canadian companies to its procurement list and actually procure from them. Working with the Trade Commissioner Service, EDC, both here and abroad, will then bring targeted Canadian companies to the attention of that foreign buyer with whom we have established this financial relationship. That, of course, builds a bridge along which trade happens year after year afterwards.
We operate in 16 foreign representations, which is a very small number compared to where our trade commissioners work. They have a much greater reach than we have, and so we go to them in the vast majority of cases, but when we are in the same city, we work in the office right next door and work together at the same receptions, the same trade shows, the same companies, etc.
Mr. Chair, I'll stop there.
Thank you for your attention. I will be pleased to respond to your questions.