Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here today and for the opportunity to talk about the advantages and the opportunities for Canadian businesses from across the country in this trade agreement with Japan.
I wanted to thank Mr. Davies for his compliments to the government, which is moving ahead in dealing with some of the trade tariff issues, but I also wanted to rectify and correct the fact of the reduction in manufacturing jobs that he referred to. You have to take into consideration 2009-10 as the worst downturn in the economy in the lifetime of everybody in this room.
Considering the fact that we've regained about 750,000 jobs since 2009, the vast majority, 80% to 90%, of those are in the private sector and are full time. I think it speaks volumes to the importance of diversifying our economy. We're still focusing on our number one trading partner, the United States, but we're looking at—we talked about the importance of bilateral and why we're here today working with Japan and ultimately with the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
I was in Taiwan last week with the past co-chair of Canada-Taiwan. One of the issues we met about with President Ma was the importance of getting beef back into Taiwan. Mr. Wildeman, I know that you and your association have been pushing strongly for that as well as for the importance of South Korea. We realize the importance of these issues and continue to work across the Asia.... Taiwan was talking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership as well. They want to be partners in that.
We're moving in the right direction, all together.
Coming from British Columbia, as do Mr. Davies and Mr. Sandhu, a few of us around the table, I want to stress the importance of this agreement, what this trade agreement will mean specifically for the west coast, the economy of British Columbia. Maybe we'll start with our professor from UBC. I've got UBC Okanagan in my riding. As a professor, could you elaborate on some of the economic advantages for British Columbia from this opportunity with Japan? A couple of colleagues just came back from Japan.