I think something we're learning as a company is the expectations we should have when dealing with our trade commissioner service. That's a very fair question.
I actually couldn't sleep the other night, so I looked at the testimony of some of the previous witnesses who appeared before this committee. I saw that Mr. McGovern spoke about the value of relationships and about how the trade commissioner service really tries to maximize the value of those. That gets difficult when you are expecting someone, in some office somewhere in our case, to actually say, “We're going to help your company convince this local market that you're the greatest thing in the world”.
I think part of what could be done early on, for companies that deal with the trade commissioner service, would be to set a reality check of expectations with regard to what's really possible and doable. They can give strategic advice. They can understand local market conditions. In my view, they could be stronger at understanding public policy, which is something that's really a matter of their training and doesn't have to do with the sales cycle, and which can be extremely important to a company such as ours working in environment and energy.
I think it would be very fair to have a sense of the expectations, because I agree with you that at the end of the day, we have to sell our own value added. I made the point about the Canada brand; I think any effort to bring that to the table is extremely helpful.
In terms of other countries, I just raised it because I've had personal experience. The U.K. and France called us up and brought us in. They had done a lot of homework about our company, and they actually said, “We want you to come to our country and make an investment and participate in our communities and create jobs”.
So I'm just asking, because I don't know, are we doing that in Canada? That may be something we should be looking at.