Evidence of meeting #132 for International Trade in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Sorry. Nice try, but we're going to move to another round.
Mr. Fonseca, you have the floor.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
I want to start with Northern Cables.
You're quite a success story. You could be a case study for manufacturing and being a successful manufacturer here in Canada. I think you said you started with five employees and you're up to 230 employees and that today, 50% of your revenue is coming from exports. Of that 50%, how much is U.S. and Mexico based and how much would be from other countries?
12:25 p.m.
President, Northern Cables Inc.
It's primarily all from the U.S. Right now, maybe 2% to 3% is from somewhere other than the U.S.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Is that through the supply chain, with some of the mining companies and others you work with?
12:25 p.m.
President, Northern Cables Inc.
It's specifically from mining. The mining industry is the single biggest opportunity we have for export.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
You're looking to grow that 2% to 3% and diversify outside of the North American market. Do you have a plan for that? I know you talked about going metric in terms of your product, but do you have a robust plan set up? Have you shared that and gotten into contact with the trade commissioner service's offices?
12:25 p.m.
President, Northern Cables Inc.
We're actually on the accelerated growth program. We've had the National Research Council, the Standards Council and the BDC come at us with a 40-page document. They will accompany us to trade shows and they will introduce us.... But we have a product that's in inches, so it's very pinpointed to the people in those countries that will accept a product in inches. We have to go back to first principles and get our product into measurements that those other countries accept, and then we can put in a full-court press. Our website is in Spanish already.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Great. Do you have a plan for that? Is that changing your machinery? What does that entail?
12:25 p.m.
President, Northern Cables Inc.
We're ready. We're making the product whether it's in inches or metric. We sell product in Canada in metres. It's really getting the standard, specifically for tech cable, that is a mining industry success story, getting that specification by CSA into metric sizes.
We don't need financing. We don't go to trade shows. We already sit on international boards. We just have a product that's kind of landlocked.
12:25 p.m.
President, Northern Cables Inc.
It's very early. To get metric accepted is something we've probably only started in the last 12 months to really put a press on. It's quite a bureaucratic battle, and we had hoped that today we could maybe spread that and get a little bit of assistance with it.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Peter Fonseca Liberal Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Thank you, Mr. Stafford.
Thank you, Mr. Bacon.
My next question will be going to Ms. Peters. It will be about our fall economic statement.
There is quite an investment that is going to be made, $184 million over five years, to the trade services for exports. There was $13.5 million established for the mentorship programs that you've spoken to as well as $10 million over the next three years to enhance small to medium-sized firms' readiness for export capacity.
Did you get a chance to read the document to see how those would align with some of your needs? I think mentorship was one that you brought up.
12:30 p.m.
Chief Strategy Officer, Communitech
Yes, we read that with great interest.
I think part of what we have been able to do over the last eight or nine years is work really closely with the trade commissioner service so that we're vetting companies, small companies typically, making sure that they are ready for a hand-off to the trade commissioners in market and that they're ready to take advantage of the introductions, advice and those types of things.
The notion of more mentorship, more resources, and more ways to help companies go international is certainly very welcome. I know our regional partners are really interested to understand how we can make sure that we are getting companies properly ready.
I had the opportunity to talk to the lead of the Canadian tech accelerator program yesterday. We talked about what some the coaching opportunities are and if there is a pre-flight curriculum we could help develop and then deliver to the thousands of companies that we serve to streamline those requests.
I know the trade commissioners get inundated with requests for help, and we can, I think, help to manage some of that demand on their time and resources. What we'd really welcome is the opportunity to help roll out some of these new things.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
We're going to move over to the Conservatives now.
Mr. Hoback, you have the floor.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
Mr. Bacon and Mr. Stafford, you talked in your presentation about how you're seeing competition coming in from other countries. These countries are metric, but they're coming in and selling in both metric and English here in Canada. Is that what they're doing?
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
But when they sell in their own country, it's always in metric.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
So they're doing both. Are they running two different lines then?
12:30 p.m.
President, Northern Cables Inc.
No, it's in measurement. It's like doing metric conversion on your calculator. On the same machine you could make—
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Then, for your products going to those countries, you just need to put the metric measurements on your label.
12:30 p.m.
President, Northern Cables Inc.
We need the standard to accept metric measurements and allow it.