I think it was former minister Fast who said at one time that 98% of Canadian companies don't export. They don't export because they're really small and don't have any capability to export.
Capacity is one thing, and capability is something else entirely. If we're going to be successful in global markets, we need to scale companies up. It's certainly something that we're working on with Minister Bains and ISED through their innovation agenda, but they have to be of a certain scale in order to be able to get them to grow. A small company of five or seven employees in a machine shop or something like that isn't really going to be looking at global opportunities. They're probably barely exporting outside their own province.
I think we really do need to focus the resources on companies with high growth potential, and companies that have a better alignment towards global opportunities in key sectors. Mining would be a good one. Food would be another really good one, especially when you're talking about the Pacific Alliance. Instead of Canada trying to be all things to all people when we're trying to do export promotion, we should target specific sectors in the specific regions that actually have a chance of success rather than just hoping that other sectors will catch on and go there.