Thank you.
First of all, good afternoon.
Thank you, Chair and Vice-Chair. It's a privilege to be here.
As you can see, my name is a little different. Like many Canadians, I wasn't born here. I am a proud Canadian. I moved here about 16 years ago to pursue an MBA in Toronto.
I am originally from Israel and I will take a few paragraphs or sentences, if you will, to discuss the nature of that country, because I think that when you talk about international trade you can learn from a country that is miniscule in comparison to Canada. Obviously, it has a fraction of our population, with no real natural resources, yet the vast majority of the economy is based on one thing: commerce with the outside world.
If you look at the borders, there is no real trade with any of the neighbouring countries, but then you have the other countries. The country and the government traditionally have been very supportive of different companies and trade in general in terms of supporting both funding and relationships, etc.
When you look at technology companies, I don't know if you're aware but the second largest number of companies listed second on NASDAQ after American ones are not Canadian, but Israeli. A lot of that based on trade policies.
Having said that, thanks to the Canadian free trade agreement with Colombia, our company was fortunate enough last year to win against, among others, an Israeli company that did not have such an agreement. The free trade agreement with the point system made the difference.
Our company teaches English. We combine technology and content into an online environment. The contract we were awarded was to train Colombians nationwide, in a contract with the government. As a result, we hired 15 new employees—obviously on quite a fast growth trajectory.
We also have a contract with the Government of China, whereby we publish books in English. We have about a 60% market share in primary schools.
You'll be proud to know that most Chinese children learn Canadian English; that is quite a thing. We are moving beyond English, especially in Colombia, to French, Mandarin, and some other languages.
We use the trade commissioners, as we find them to be very helpful, as do some of our colleagues.
Unless you go directly to consumers, the nature of business is that it's all based on relationships and the best doesn't always win; many times it's who you know, who has the shortest distance to the end goal, which is the contract. Those relationships are paramount to any type of success. The trade commissioners do some of that field work. However, that's where it ends and, obviously, it moves into the company, which is fine.
We tried to cooperate with the CCC and we found it to be more challenging. I think they are much more targeted to large organizations—the Bombardiers of the world, the defence-oriented organizations—but I think you can find growth in the small or medium-sized companies that can bring funds into the country. This is the one opportunity where you can create something with your head and bring capital into the country. If you look beyond the relationship introduction, when we talk about support and not necessarily funding support, it is as much about trying to get to the goal.
Israel has something called the Office of the Chief Scientist. It's an organization that provides lots of funding for technology-wide research and development. They cooperate differently with different countries so we want some sort of a contract with the Chief Scientist in Israel.
Any Canadian non-profit cooperates to develop a speech recognition analysis, so when you speak English it will analyze how you pronounce the different words and you can work on your pronunciation. If you look at Asians or Latinos, you can improve the speaker's comprehension by using software with a very sophisticated algorithm.
Again, I think it would be very helpful for Canada to have different elements in terms of what it does with trade, and to maybe have more help or facilities or opportunities for the smaller companies rather than just for the big organizations.
Thank you.