Merchandise trade is of course vital. Those statistics are very interesting. The OECD, however, has recently come out with a very interesting set of statistics that I would encourage this committee to look at, both for this particular study that you're conducting and on an ongoing basis. That's the OECD value-added trade data.
If this glass, for example, crosses a border, you would consider that an import from India to Canada. But it doesn't tell you about some of the inputs—some of the sand or various other inputs—that went into this. This is a very simple example, but you can imagine a computer.
So it doesn't actually decompose this investment in terms of where those other parts came from. Furthermore, we have very poor data on investment in services, which we know are very difficult to track, which I believe is one of the more dynamic areas. I think our value-added opportunity is absolutely in imports and exports, but also in being able to go to India....
For example, Dominic Barton, the global CEO of McKinsey, spoke at our Pacific Century conference. He spoke about the $33-billion worth of investment the Indians need to make in their infrastructure—energy, housing, municipal waste water, for example—over the next 20 years. These are huge opportunities for Canadian firms. They will never be measured in imports and exports, because what we're suggesting is for Canadian engineering, design, and construction firms to actually travel to India and provide the service there. You would never see that show up, for example, as an import-export situation.
So if you will allow me, I do think that somewhat looks at one important part but not certainly the full picture of assessment that we'd encourage this committee to examine as you look at Canada-India economic relations.