Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Honourable committee members, Mr. Lebel. Manufacturiers et Exportateurs du Québec—MEQ—is pleased to speak today on behalf of its 900 members in Quebec and more than 20,000 Quebec manufacturers.
As you know, manufacturing is the largest sector of Quebec's economy, and Canada's. It accounts for 12% of GDP. In Quebec, it employs 550,000 well-paid workers in jobs that add value. Now that our natural resource sector cannot act as the driver it was just two years ago, the manufacturing sector's contribution is even more essential to the Quebec and the Canadian economy.
It's quite simple. Quebec's manufacturing sector cannot prosper if it's confined to a small economy such as ours. To grow, we need to export. And we are already doing that. More than half our production goes elsewhere. Sometimes, we're a part of an American manufacturing chain. We also export finished and semi-finished goods worldwide. It's important to understand that manufactured goods account for 75% of all Quebec exports. Although the U.S. market remains a priority for us, more and more Quebec manufacturers are considering opportunities elsewhere in the world.
So we obviously support agreements that will allow the free flow of goods, provided those agreements give our manufacturers access to foreign markets on a basis equal to the opportunities our competitors have to penetrate the Canadian market. On a strict reading of the TPP's provisions, that access is being given. I should also mention that our support for agreements of this kind is predicated on the assumption that they're not brought in merely to support the resource sector, adding obstacles to current agreements such as the one we have in place with our U.S. and Mexican neighbours.
Not surprisingly, MEQ and its national organization, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, have asked for and supported the implementation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We are the main advocates for this kind of agreement in Quebec, and you can count on us to continue to be so in the years ahead. The PowerPoint presentation that I've attached sets out the numerous opportunities for Quebec, which you no doubt know by heart.
We do have some reservations that I'd like to discuss today. First, there are two reservations about the agreement itself. Obviously, we're concerned about U.S. protectionism as reflected in the Buy American Act, notably with respect to American public procurement. That is the first reservation.
The second reservation is that we would have wanted the international tariff reduction phase to follow the same timeline applicable to American manufacturers, and for an effective mechanism to be put in place to counter currency manipulations that pose a medium-term and long-term threat to us. We saw that sort of thing this year with China, and we hope that the space we carve out for ourselves will be safe from manipulations of that kind, engaged in by certain authorities and countries. Those are our reservations about the agreement itself.
I would also like to share some important reservations we have about the choices we'll be making here, in Quebec and Canada. If we choose well, we will undoubtedly find it easier to overcome the obstacles. So the reservations I'm about to mention are not about the agreement itself, but about the choices facing us in Quebec and in Canada.
I want to emphasize that, although these treaties are positives for Quebec and Canada, they are only a framework. We need to know how to take advantage of that framework. The main prerequisite for that is a strong local manufacturing base. But Quebec does not have that. Compared to businesses elsewhere in the world, Quebec businesses are not particularly competitive. Quebec is ranked tenth in Canada for productivity, and that's mainly because our processes aren't innovative enough. They're not sufficiently automated or robotics-based. And we don't have all the skilled labour we need to be able to count on. We are therefore concerned that this government has made strong commitments to the knowledge economy and green technologies, without, first and foremost, supporting its traditional manufacturing sector.
I will conclude on this, Mr. Chair.
That is why my first reservation is very important. If we want Canada to be able to profit from these agreements, we have to establish a much stronger manufacturing base and resolutely commit ourselves to a culture of innovation, the likes of which has never really been seen before, either in Quebec or in Canada.
My second reservation is about the fact that we have to provide our entrepreneurs with much more education. We therefore need much more support from Canadian authorities than they have provided up to now. We must be able to go and see people in the field. If we want to be competitive, it will take more companies, which will have to be larger, more innovative and more ambitious. It is a role that we are prepared to play in collaboration with the government.
I could go on for hours on this, Mr. Chair, but since you want me to conclude, I will finish here for now.