Thank you so much.
Thank you to all of our witnesses today.
I'll pick up on my colleague's thread. There is a role for industry associations and SMEs to play on their own, but the resources that it requires, to your point, are quite significant. Hopefully there will be something that will connect those pieces and allow resources to go to all of your groups so that you can continue to research.
I know, Ms. Pohlmann, you've been here on several occasions with different datasets reflecting not a huge trend. Things are kind of staying exactly where they are year after year. We're not able to see movement on some of the things that we'd like to see.
We had the minister here last week. The concerns that we're raising and, I think, that we're hearing from companies across the country are that, yes, we're signing these trade agreements, but are we improving trade? There were some really discouraging.... A report that came out of National Bank last week on the Canada-EU trade deal said that we now have a deficit of 46% after signing it, over 10 months. How is it that we're signing agreements that are supposed to open doors for all of the SMEs, but they're not getting across that threshold? It sounds like even the big players are not getting across in the way that maybe they used to.
Something else that's come up at the committee—and a lot of you mention this in your comments—is the importance of SMEs combining export-oriented programs with industrial domestic strategies. These things don't sit independently. They have to work together and be under one piece.
How can we create this? I would like your thoughts, but before I go to them—because we'll probably run out of time—I would like it if you could all submit your recommendations to the committee and be as specific as possible about what you think will work going forward for SMEs to see opportunities in international trade. That's really the crux of what we're doing here, to have a report to provide to the government.
I'd like your thoughts on how we really need to look at these pieces together and not in isolation.