Good morning, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the opportunity to address the Standing Committee on International Trade.
I'm here to provide a bit of general context on trade diversification, certainly Canada's journey on this over the last several decades. I very much look forward to your questions as well.
As you know, Canada is a trading nation. A very important fact about our merchandise trade exports is that we have 0.5% of the world's GDP, but we have more than 2.5% of the world's exports. That's just goods. I'm also very excited about the increase we've seen in services trade—and perhaps we can talk about that in the Q and A—with everything from engineering to financial services. That's a big part of our diversification story.
We know that engaging in foreign markets enhances productivity—the productivity of companies who exchange technology, talent, and products, as well as the productivity of Canada. Fortunately circumstances have never been better for Canada. The signing of the Canada-EU trade agreement, CPTPP, which is currently, as you know, in Parliament for consideration, and now the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement provides unprecedented access to customers around the world. We will be the only G7 country with free trade agreements with every other G7 country. Our population will have access to the world's richest consumers, over 1.3 billion of them. I think that's a good news story for small business everywhere.
In his August 28 mandate letter, Minister Carr, the Minister for International Trade Diversification, was directed to lead the development and implementation of a trade diversification strategy. An initial piece of $50 million was announced at the end of June to support export market diversification. I'm thrilled to tell you that essentially we're just adding speed to a pretty good machine that's already running.
I want to leave three key messages with this committee. First, the trade commissioner service is here to work with businesses of all sizes. We have regional offices across the country, in every region, in Halifax, in Toronto, in Montreal, in Calgary, in Vancouver, and in every province and major city in between to work with small business. This is an invitation to the committee to refer companies that you meet in your role as MPs and in your parliamentary duties to the trade commissioner service.
Second, why work with us? It's very simple. Companies that work with the trade commissioner service export 20% more to 25% more markets. That's evidence we've gathered with our chief economist and Statistics Canada over a long period of time. The bottom line for companies is that that means more customers, more orders, more profit, and more jobs. So, please, do work with us.
Third, what exactly do we do? We provide market intelligence, open doors, and do troubleshooting. In the Q and A I'd be happy to talk to you about where we see our footprint. We are increasingly seeing more traffic from Canadian business, including in our bedrock relationships with the U.S., where we have a very deep set of city networks as well as state networks in addition to our embassy in Washington. As well, we've seen huge growth in interest in our Asia offices. We have 1,000 experts around the world in 160 offices, who are essentially the international business development officers for Canadian businesses of all sizes and particularly small business.
I'll take note of the Chair's comments and keep this short. We can talk trade numbers. We can talk stats. We can talk about the increase in trade with the EU. We can talk about the fact that despite the challenges the aluminum sector is having with the illegal duties the U.S. has imposed, some of which my colleagues will address, we've seen a 200% increase in aluminum exports to the EU over the last year.
The trade commissioner service is certainly doing its part to act aggressively for Canadian small business. I will conclude by saying that this is an invitation to each of you to work with and refer companies to the trade commissioner service. We want to be put to work for Canadian business.
Thank you.