Good morning, everybody. Welcome. This is the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade.
I have a few housekeeping things right off the bat. Since it's the House of Commons, we have two different languages. If anybody needs translation, we have those boxes in the back. As far as pictures go, you cannot take pictures during the sessions, but in between, when we suspend, anybody is free to take pictures then. For media availability, after the sessions are over this afternoon at a quarter to two I will be available for 10 minutes if anybody from the media wants to talk to me. After that, we have to move on.
It's great for our committee to be here in beautiful British Columbia and of course here in Vancouver. Many of us got here early yesterday and got to enjoy the city. This is our first stop in our trip across the country. We are going to try to stop in every province, and we're also going to be doing video conferences from Ottawa with the territories.
As many of you know, Canada is a trading nation. We do a lot of trade. We do over a trillion dollars' worth of trade a year, and three-quarters of that is with TPP countries. I was looking at some of the numbers. British Columbia does 10% of that trade.
Our committee consists of members from right across the country. From British Columbia, we have Sukh Dhaliwal. From Saskatchewan, we have Mr. Ritz and Mr. Hoback. From southern Ontario, we have Ms. Ramsey and Mr. Van Kesteren. From the Toronto area, we have Mr. Fonseca and Mr. Peterson. From Atlantic Canada, we have Ms. Ludwig from New Brunswick and me from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, so we have a broad group.
We also have two members from Quebec, Mr. Lametti and Madam Lapointe, who are in Ottawa taking care of things for us there today.
We're going to visit all the provinces, and besides listening to witnesses across this country and in Ottawa, we will also be taking submissions from the public. We had such a big uptake—I think we started off with 6,000 emails last week and now we're up to 10,000—that we've extended the time for submissions from the public. They can be sent in to our trade committee until the end of June. I think they're allowed to be up to 1,500 words and, to make it easier for us, we'd like them to have an executive summary.
As we travel and as our analysts put all of this together, it's probably going to take a full year to do this report by the time we do the briefings and the report that we will present to the House. We're hoping to get it there by the end of the year, which would bode well, because we'll present it to the House of Commons and that gives the rest of the MPs a chance to look at it. We're expecting that some time next year there of course will be a vote on this.
This is where we start: here in British Columbia. The way we have it is that we're going to one city or town in each province. In Quebec and Ontario, we're going to a couple of different places.
We will have four panels. Each panel lasts about an hour. We will have three witnesses on each panel and they will have five minutes each. Then we'll have Qs and As. When I hit the gavel, we suspend, and then another group comes in.
The way we're doing it is quite new for us. It's exciting that there's such a big interest out there in what we're doing. It is a very important thing with what is happening on this trade agreement.
On that note, we're going to start with some witnesses from the British Columbia area. I have with me today Mr. Stewart Beck from the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
Welcome, sir. You have five minutes. We'll have everybody give their submissions and then away we go.