Thanks, Mark.
Several of our small and medium-sized members operate internationally. What might be surprising for some around the table is the fact that for several of these members, the vast majority of their customers are actually outside of Canada. They have almost no customers within the country. These companies are continuously looking to grow their businesses in international markets, and they appreciate programs like the CanExport program and the trade commissioner service.
We asked our members what the government could do to assist them in taking advantage of free trade agreements, and their comments back to me were based on all trade agreements, not specifically on the CETA and the CPTPP. They said that one of the things that the government could greatly assist them with is identifying explanations of the specific provisions of free trade agreements on a sector-by-sector basis rather than an agreement-by-agreement basis. This is because of the reality that small and medium-sized entrepreneurs do not have the time to read each and every trade agreement. They said that this would be very helpful. They also said that it would be helpful to have that information in a digital, searchable format.
They also told us that the trade commissioner service, while very helpful to them, could have more impact if it adopted more of a push approach to communicating its services. Several of our members told us that it behooves them to actually reach out to the TCS. A lot of small and medium-sized businesses just don't know that the trade commissioner service exists.
We believe that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and other business associations could be of assistance to the government in doing that. For example, we have a network of 450-plus local chambers of commerce and boards of trade throughout the country, and other business associations have a network of the same type of scope. We feel that we could be of assistance in terms of acting as a conduit for communicating the services of the trade commissioner service.
Like previous speakers have said, once a business has identified an opportunity in a foreign market, it needs local partners to assist it in navigating market conditions, regulations, etc. Our members believe that the government could provide more effective assistance to them by making available a vetted list of in-country legal, regulatory and other consultants that have expertise in these various regions.
Finally, in 2017, Export Development Canada reported that only 4% of Canadian SMEs are exporters. This compares to numbers in the 20% range for some of our G7 partners. Our members have suggested that the government could assist in increasing this number, which could greatly help, by doing three things. First, it could look at the best practices and programs offered by G7 colleagues to help their small and medium-sized businesses export. Second, it could reconsider the metrics for measuring the government's success in supporting the exports of Canadian businesses—for example, implementing the metric of the number of businesses that are exporting rather than the gross dollar amount exported. Third, it could promote the success stories of Canadian SMEs that are operating internationally.
Grant Thornton just completed a report of recent winners of the Private Business Growth Award. The one thing that each of the winners had in common was that they were exporting in markets, and most of them outside of the United States. Our members felt that if we could highlight those examples as businesses that other SMEs could aspire to emulate, that would help greatly.
Thank you again for the opportunity to meet with you this morning.