Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you for allowing us to speak to the Standing Committee on International Trade today.
My name is Leigh Smout, and I'm the executive director of the World Trade Centre Toronto at the Toronto Region Board of Trade. We are the trade services arm for one of the oldest and largest chambers of commerce in North America, which represents, in large part, the business community for the Toronto region.
The Toronto Region Board of Trade is very pleased to see the federal government continue to seek trade deals and improve market access for Canadian businesses. The new CPTPP deal is a positive step toward greater economic opportunities. This government has also taken a proactive and aggressive approach to ensure NAFTA continues to benefit Canadians through the USMCA.
However, while signing free trade agreements is important, enabling Canadians to fully realize the benefits of these trade deals is critical as well. The board supports the government's increased investments in trade commissioner services, but we believe more can be done to educate and prepare SMEs to take advantage of Canada's extensive network of free trade agreements, and to encourage them to activate their businesses in international markets.
For instance, while European companies have already taken advantage of CETA to significantly increase their sales to Canada, Canadian companies have been much slower to grow their sales into Europe. All of us in the trade ecosystem in Canada need to seriously assess our efforts to get more Canadian companies trading.
In its pre-budget submission, the board urged the government to prioritize trade education and trade activation services to support its good work on CETA, the CPTPP and other trade agreements. With uncertainty over trade with the U.S. remaining, this need is even more pressing, and recent experience leads us to the conclusion that small and medium-sized enterprises need to be directly encouraged and supported by engaging in these and other priority markets.
World Trade Centre Toronto runs a highly successful trade accelerator program, called TAP, and during the past year, working with Export Development Canada, Global Affairs, Business Development Bank of Canada and other public and private sector trade organizations, we have trained our partners in world trade centres and in chambers across the country to also run the trade accelerator program.
More than 500 small and medium-sized enterprises have graduated from TAP to date, and as the program has grown nationally, that number is now rapidly increasing. According to our latest survey results, armed with industry-vetted strategic export plans, these TAP graduate companies are growing revenue at an average of 17% year over year as a result of increasing their export business.
With enhanced support from the Government of Canada, our national TAP network can significantly increase the number of Canadian companies that are expertly prepared to grow their exports into FTA and other markets. The best thing about TAP is that we have been able to leverage every government agency dollar that supports it into two dollars or more from the private sector. That is something that cannot be achieved by government working on its own.
With support, we could also implement programs to help train members of under-represented communities, such as programs for women entrepreneurs and indigenous entrepreneurs.
Companies also need to be supported directly in market. They need to personally experience the market into which their products and services are going to be introduced. They need to meet those with whom they will conduct business. For companies that graduate TAP or are otherwise ready to export, we take highly focused, sector-specific trade missions into priority markets with our market activation program, called MAP. Again, with support and collaboration from the federal government, we can enhance this program through our national network, creating a significant Canadian presence in priority markets, fostering the growth of international sales for Canadian SMEs, and taking advantage of all of the locations, so that the TCS is able to support us around the world.
To be successful at growing Canada's economy through increasing the international trade of our SMEs is going to take the combined effort of us all, private, public and not-for-profit organizations. Working together in true private-public partnership, we can take advantage of the government's excellent work on free trade agreements, and achieve trade growth that has, thus far, proven to be elusive. We encourage the government to help us all to grow Canadian SMEs by supporting the most practical trade development programs across the country.
Thank you once again for the opportunity to speak to the committee today.