In regard to the small business sector, British Columbia's business profile is about 97% businesses with 10 or fewer employees. About 40% of those are participating in some form or other of export-import, primarily with the United States. For us to succeed with trade beyond those borders would take a significant investment in development costs, training, and preparation, and also in removing some of the aura, or the scare factor, if you like, that people don't seem to want to tackle.
But I think the reality is that as we become more and more global in our approach to doing business, the inevitability of this is very real. I think the ability of the Canadian business sector and the British Columbia business sector to compete and to grow has to be based on exports. We are concerned here in B.C. that we don't have enough small businesses in a growth mode. Many businesses are looking at themselves as surviving, as opposed to growing, and a lot of this has to do, I think, with attitude and somewhat with a reluctance to engage in international trade beyond maybe the U.S.-Canada situation, perhaps driven by language and perhaps driven by reasonably common currency and those sorts of things.
We need to do something, I think, to better educate our business community. The opportunities and the trade agreements like this are as good a tool as there is.