Thank you Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McGovern, and Mr. MacArthur. I very much appreciate the professionalism you are bringing to what you're doing.
What strikes me, and maybe not just me, is that when we think of trade and its definition and what the expansion of that definition actually means, we think of a product going back and forth between two countries. But as you mentioned at the start of your presentation, it's about much more than that, including investments in technology and workers, and managing.
There's a whole package, which I'm so glad to hear you talk about, because in my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, I don't have large businesses. It's a small town and a rural riding, which has a lot of small and very few medium size businesses.
You talked about serving more than 13,000 Canadian firms, mostly SMEs, a 10% increase over last year. Can you talk to me a little bit about how that happened? Was there a voluntary sign-up, or did you go seeking them? And when you go seeking—there's a two-way street here—how do you know where to go, and how do you approach a company?