Thank you for taking the time to listen today and for making the arrangements to allow me to appear by video conference. I left Ottawa yesterday, and the weather was a little different there.
I'll give you a quick background of who the Consider Canada City Alliance is. We are a collaborative organization of 11 of the economic development organizations from municipalities across Canada. Our members are Halifax, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, the Waterloo region, London, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, and Vancouver. We account for approximately 52% of Canada's population, approximately 54.5% of its GDP, and in the last five years approximately 68% of Canada's GDP growth.
Our primary focus is to collaborate, to attract foreign investment to Canada and to our member cities, to share best practices among ourselves to improve our productivity and effectiveness, and to work with partners to improve the attractiveness of Canada as a location for foreign direct investment. As an organization we started informally in 2007. In 2012, a little less than three years ago, we incorporated as a not-for-profit organization.
For the functioning of our organization and our members, the global markets action plan is of critical importance. First, it clearly indicates Canada's geographic priorities for foreign direct investment and trade as well as the priorities among industrial sectors. Canada is and always has been a trading nation. It highlights the importance of foreign direct investment and trade to the Canadian economy.
Of great importance is that it clearly indicates to the international market the commitment of the federal government to the furthering of foreign trade and investment. It helps our individual members to develop their strategies and ensure that they are in concert with federal objectives, and it provides a clear indication of where and how federal resources will be deployed.
I know you're interested in what has been achieved. First, I think of most importance for our members is that it has allowed them to focus on specific industrial sectors and specific geographic areas. Municipal organizations such as our members are rather at the bottom of the totem pole. Resources are very scarce, and they have to focus their efforts.
We believe there is an increasingly effective one-two punch whereby the federal government presents the value of the policies and the business environment that has been created in Canada, and then our members follow up with the specific opportunities for investors and indications of how those investors can be integrated into our individual cities.
Over the past two years there has been a tremendous increase in the working relationship between our organization and its members and Foreign Affairs, Invest in Canada, and the Trade Commissioner Service. We're increasingly integrating our action, including activities, communications, and messaging. As I mentioned, we're making better and better use of the scarce resources of our members. As of this summer we had a trade commissioner attached to our organization, who now works with us and our 11 members directly linking the Trade Commissioner Service to our members. At our semi-annual meeting held in Ottawa in February, it was made clear that one thing that has occurred is the increasing professionalism and sophistication of all parties in the pursuit of foreign investment and trade.
To look at some specific examples, we strongly support Canada's increasing efforts to increase trade and investment agreements around the world.
In March 2014 we were in Japan and Taiwan getting ready for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In the fall, we were in Europe for the second time in advance of CETA coming into law. We have taken the stance that it's best to be well prepared for when these agreements are finally approved rather than sit back and wait for their approval, and then try to go out and take advantage of them.
In March we will have our fourth mission to China, and it follows on the 2012 complementary study done with China as well as a recent visit by the Prime Minister to China.
We also do smaller missions. For example, this mission I am on is in support of an investment conference. It's going to be held in advance of the Pan American Games. We are visiting Miami for that seminar, and business meetings are tomorrow, and then we are going on to Sao Paulo and Goryeo.
In California later this week we'll be at the Game Developers Conference with seven of our cities, in conjunction with the federal government, again looking at further trade and investment in the gaming area.
Some of our members participated in the recent trade mission to South Korea following up on the agreement of that trade and investment agreement, and two of our members were at the APEC summit in Beijing. Although we were part of the Canadian delegation, both our members were invited by their Chinese partner, one being Guangzhou and the other being Beijing.
We've integrated our messaging to ensure the federal government messaging is embodied into our messaging and to improve the messaging, at the federal level, of the advantages of our individual member cities. We are now in the process of integrating the event calendars across the world with our own members to ensure we take maximum advantage of a scheduled activity.
Here are two recent examples of the advantage of the activity. At our semi-annual meeting in Ottawa, we had presentations by Immigration on changes to immigration laws as well as to foreign temporary worker programs. This was as a result of having seen a similar presentation that was given by web to the Trade Commissioner Service. Last week our members were part of the webinar on the value proposition for clinical trials in Canada that was given to the Trade Commissioner Service.
We now have increasing access to all of the tools available to the Trade Commissioner Service by using the trade commissioner who has been embedded with us.
I think in summary the global markets action plan has presented a clear indication of Canada's direction with respect to trade and investment and better enabled our members to take advantage of that.
I will briefly comment on the importance of the air transport agreements, and in that I will support many of the comments made by Mr. Gibbons. First of all, as I mentioned before, Canada is a trading nation. It relies on foreign investment, and we operate in a global environment. Furthermore, most of the investment that's coming into our cities is in the innovation sectors, and hence the high value-added sector. It's therefore key that we are able to move people and goods around the world fairly easily and fairly cost competitively. It is key to us that access is available around the world so we fully support the increase of air transport agreements by Canada, and I would say every one of our members works very closely with the airport authority in their particular region.
With that, I will end my comments and wait for questions.
Thank you.