Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank Mr. Shah for the last statement. As a government, that is clearly a significant point, in looking at the fact that 95% of our companies are small. Those are the ones that are hiring most of the people. I really appreciate that comment.
The other point I also wanted to touch on is this. When you have recommendations, I hope that we can hear about them when we're doing our study. I'm not looking for a hundred, but we are looking for a consolidation of priority recommendations, because I can tell you, the witnesses, that you are the envy of many agencies that sit at the witness table, in telling them how they are used and in making recommendations directly That is encouraging in terms of being able to bore or narrow down on how we can make the service better. Those are the things we're really interested in.
The other part I'm interested in is your comment about how the market is a world. I have a question to each one of you. How much of your market is domestic? How much is international? We've been working on trade agreements. As you know, we're looking at another 40 or 50 trade agreements. How much of your business success will be dependent on our doing new trade agreements?
Secondly, regarding the value of the Canadian brand, which than one of you have mentioned that, I have a quick story. A small business in my riding was making a product, and they were struggling. The owner said that he could not believe that when they put the Canadian flag on the back of the product, so that anybody on the road could see read it, they sold the product. It made a huge difference. I asked him why that was so important.
So my question to you is why the Canadian brand is so important to the success of your business in the international world.
I want to start with Mr. Clarke, and then Mr. Chiasson.