International Trade Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2018

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Kingston, what we are hearing particularly from small businesses, as Ms. Bamford was also mentioning, is that it's not easy for them to access the programs that are in place. Are they not aware of them? Do they not have time? Could you tell me some of the tangible solutions that can be worked out between your members and the government?

[Brian Kingston]

In terms of raising awareness, yesterday's announcement goes some of the way to addressing that, by giving the trade commissioner service more funding so that it can hire more people and be out in the community making companies aware of the services that are provided.

The other way they can understand the opportunities is through working with large companies and becoming part of a large company's supply chain. We've seen many great examples where an SME has been brought into a large company's supply chain, and then that large company has brought them into a new market such as China. It has helped them enter that market and understand all the complexity of doing so, and they're protected by the large company there.

That's not something in which there is necessarily a role for government. That's just the collaboration and co-operation amongst large and small firms. We recently asked 50 of our member companies to provide input on how many SMEs they have in their supply chain. The numbers are staggering. In a typical year, those 50 companies had 50,000 Canadian SMEs through their supply chain. This is everything from a company providing coffee at meetings to people producing highly complex and technical parts that go into a bigger product.

There's a lot of room for collaboration there, but it's the government's role to make SMEs aware of the services available.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

You're right on time, Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Before I go to the NDP, I'd like to welcome the member for Huron—Bruce, Mr. Lobb.

Welcome to our committee.

[Ben Lobb, Huron—Bruce, CPC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

As you can see, it's very exciting here, with good stuff happening.

[Ben Lobb]

Yes. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

We're going to go to Ms. Ramsey.

You have five minutes. Go ahead.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for being here.

I share your deep frustration, Ms. Bamford. I have to tell you that it is sometimes just an exercise in futility to sit here and have all of you come. I know you all presented in the previous Parliament around a similar study that was called “Competing Globally”, bringing forward a lot of the same issues that we're yet again sitting here today discussing, looking for action on from the government.

I think a lot of them are very specific and concrete things that you've brought forward that could really make a difference.

I take your point, Mr. Wilson. You're saying we need a different approach. That couldn't be more true. When we look at even the agreements that we're signing, there's an idea that these will offer us opportunities, but then we see disappointing things like we're seeing out of the CETA results in less than a year, where we have a 46% deficit that somehow has appeared.

Obviously, the trade agreements are not a magic bullet. They are not actually being written in a way that is opening doors for businesses, and that is just a source of extreme frustration for all of you and for some of the members on this committee.

I want to speak about a couple of other things. These were the NDP recommendations in the previous Parliament. Some of them will sound familiar because you certainly touched on them, but I wonder if, when I've finished with these few things, you could talk about the importance of these small things that would make such a huge difference in your ability to export and grow your business.

The first one—and this was mentioned—is about coordinating the export marketing support across all levels of government, something that seems so simple in its approach, but we continue to be in this kind of silo world where one doesn't talk to the other and doesn't know what the other is doing, and so these programs just fundamentally aren't working.

Second is a one-stop shop where SMEs could go to access all of the programs, everything that's available, and then have some resources go to the groups that are trying to connect people to these projects or whatever—funding—whatever exists in there. SMEs come before the committee and tell us they don't have the resources, they don't have someone to dedicate 100% to looking through all of these government websites to identify where they can plug in, so they need resources to do that.

Last, you mentioned the skills gap. This is something that I hear from SMEs in my riding. All of us hear this across the country. If we do not address the skills gap, we will continue to see businesses leave our country, because they can't find people to work to reach their full capacity.

I just open it to comments on those simple things, and I ask, once again, although it may be a frustrating exercise, to please submit to the committee so that we can include your remarks or things that you brought forward today in our report that we'll bring forward to Parliament.

[Jocelyn Bamford]

Can I just comment on that? We have an aging workforce, especially in the skilled labour pool. If you go out to our plant and look at our people, you see amazingly talented people, but they're getting close to retirement. We have taken all the trades out of the public high school system, so we have nobody backfilling that.

It's an easy fix. The infrastructure is there. We need to put some dedicated plan on how to get kids back into skilled labour, because that's going to be the high-paying job: the pipe fitter, the electrician. Those skilled labourers are gold—a millwright makes over $100,000. If you want your kids to make money—

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

There's no school, then.

[Jocelyn Bamford]

There's nowhere to train them, so we need to get on that skills gap. It's an easy and not expensive fix to do, I would argue, but a lot of our colleges have also decided that they want to be universities, so again, we don't have skilled labour coming out of the college system.

[Mathew Wilson]

I agree with everything that Jocelyn just said—something that we've talked about here a number of times—but I think there are a couple of things that you hit on that we fully support as well.

This idea of connecting companies to the government support programs is critically important. If a company has five people, it has no one to actually do this. The vast majority—99%—of Canadian manufacturers and exporters have that. They're not the large multinationals. They're not the GMs, the RBCs or whoever. However, don't rely on the government to do it. Setting up systems—and we've talked to Minister Ng's office about this—just for the government to deliver programs does not work. Small companies don't want to hear from government. They don't care what government has to say. With regard to Jocelyn's point—and she's not exactly one of these companies, but along the same lines—if the government's there, it's typically there just to tax you more or to regulate you more. It doesn't really want to hear from you.

Leverage associations and groups like STEP, CME, chambers of commerce, Business Council of Canada, and Canada China Business Council. We're all resources that can be used and leveraged. Let us work with the small companies. Empower us. Give us the direct resources to connect us to our members and to the broader network of exporters to facilitate that.

We had called, for example, for an export concierge service that could be set up through the private sector to do exactly what you're talking about. Don't set up fancy websites and the rest of it. No one's using them. Actually get people to talk to each other. It's an amazing thing that happens when you actually talk to someone face to face and give them customized support, and that's what associations can offer.

This idea of coordinated market support and marketing support programs, again, doesn't need to be done just across the federal government, which is essential. It also needs to connect in through the provincial governments—and regional governments in some places—and then tie in the private sector support groups like us that are actually doing those types of things across the country already. Don't look at it just as a government initiative. Look at this as how you can tie the private sector into it to leverage this up.

If this is just left in the hands of the government, there's going to be a lot of the same type of stuff. It'll be out there trying to find companies to talk to. It doesn't really understand what's going on in the marketplace. It's two or three steps removed from it. That's our job. That's what we do, so help us do those things and then you'll have a lot better results.

I've said in front of this committee a number of times that STEP is exactly the type of program that should be replicated across the country, which is exactly what you're talking about. However, it's funded by the private sector with public sector support, and it gets the outcomes that we want.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, sir.

I just have a point of clarification. Ms. Ramsey was talking about submissions. We have your submissions. I think she's alluding to the fact that if there's any new stuff from you or your members, we can take it. I think we're going to be allowing submissions to come in until the end of December.

We're going to go to the Liberals now.

Madam Ludwig, you have the floor.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

Good morning to you all. Thank you for your testimonies this morning.

I can say from being a small business owner that.... As Mr. Wilson well knows, we have a manufacturing business back in New Brunswick, and we also have a tourism business. Prior to the election, I actually taught international trade at university, so I live this.

I want to highlight a couple of points that each of you said, and then bring it back together.

Ms. Bamford, you talked about going directly to the business for the training or to get information.

Mr. Kingston, you specifically talked about better coordination.

Mr. Shantz, you talked about training modules, as well as—and I want to get back to this—education and tourism.

Mr. Wilson, you talked about scaling up and about the risk and the challenge with fewer than 10 employees. In Atlantic Canada, over 50% have four employees or less.

Mr. Dekker, you spoke of the uncertainty and the opportunities with trade missions.

Bringing that back together, I think—and we've heard from across the committee—one of the things is really the importance of getting the information to the entrepreneurs of what they actually don't know and how to coordinate that. While listening to the economic statement yesterday, I can say that I did feel encouraged at the opportunities for mentorship, when we look at further funding and investment, at ground-level initiatives, the work that is being done by so many of you here.

When you look at that, can you suggest to us how you can see tapping in to that funding to take that down to the ground level to the people who you work with directly every day and who trust you?

I'll start with Mr. Wilson.

[Mathew Wilson]

Sure. Maybe I'll just talk about the mentorship networks because that was something that we worked directly with the minister's office to get in the fall economic statement. We were very happy to see it in there yesterday.

The idea simply is to get people who know what they're actually talking about in front of other people who are struggling to do that and transfer knowledge. Knowledge is power. These small companies of five or 10 people who haven't exported, or maybe have only exported across the border into Vermont or something like that, don't have the breadth of knowledge that they need to even go to Michigan if they were already in Vermont, let alone to China, Europe or somewhere like that.

Get them in the room with people who have been there. Talk one on one. They're not government people. They're not association people. They're people who have actually done it themselves. We run these types of things across the country. In fact, Jocelyn is part of a manufacturing executive council that we run in Ontario, and we run those across the country.

The idea would be something similar to get exporters talking to exporters to actually help them build up their capacity at a local level. It could be run through associations. Again, it doesn't have to be government controlled. It's about getting the people who've been there and done that to transfer their knowledge and then be a resource for them on an ongoing basis. Then they're sharing, learning and growing together, rather than being out in the wilderness—which a lot of them feel like they are—and not knowing where to go for that help.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

Mr. Shantz, you talked specifically about the opportunities with international education and students coming here. When you look at your training modules or the 70% of your SMEs that are not involved with education, do you ever see if you can try to bring them together so the Chinese students who are studying in Canada are drawing on their expertise to work directly with some of your SMEs?

[Graham Shantz]

It's a very good question. In fact, I think for Canadian small and medium enterprises, it's the presence of so many Chinese students with degrees, often wanting to stay in Canada ultimately as permanent residents. They have a familiarity with the culture, the business culture, the language back in China. They have been tapped by many of our members as a source to look at China or to grow their China business. It's actually a competitive advantage in terms of how our immigration program integrates with our long-term economic interests as well.

On the other way we tap into it, I was thinking of some examples of large companies. There's one that comes to mind in Calgary, Nexen, which is now owned by the Chinese enterprise CNOOC. For five straight years, and this year for a sixth year, they have taken a six-month long exercise to identify 40 to 60 suppliers in the oil and gas industry who are suppliers to them in Canada—mainly Alberta but also B.C. and Saskatchewan. Some of them come from across Canada, generally the west, but not exclusively. They take them through training sessions in preparation for a visit to CNOOC headquarters, when they determine that those sub-suppliers have some world-leading expertise in services or in manufacturing. Then they do a trade mission back to CNOOC headquarters, not to the executive level, to the actual purchasing level within the company.

When I used to be a trade commissioner in Indonesia in the oil and gas sector, I would often say to Canadian companies that were contacting me, “If you want to sell to Indonesia, you need to sell to Exxon or to—at the time—Gulf Canada, Husky”, all of which had operations in Indonesia. It's a risk reduction strategy to get into a new geographic market that's a familiar market to them.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Do I have time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

No, you're well over for time.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you for the dialogue. Things are going quite well here this morning. We've done one round. I think we're going to break. Everybody can stretch their legs, get a coffee or whatever they want, and then we'll go back and do another round. We're going to suspend for 10 minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

We'll continue on our study. We have time for another round.

Welcome, to the member for Calgary Nose Hill, to our committee.