Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Bull, I can certainly attest to your statement that the access to capital is one of the major barriers.
Before joining politics I was in a small high-technology company focusing on exports and I can tell you that the company survived only because of the personal financial sense of the founders. Otherwise, the company could not have grown, nor could it have survived.
Another point is that many people don't know that the bulk of the exports, almost two-thirds of the exports from Canada, are done by foreign-owned firms. I am not against foreign capital. I love foreign capital coming in and investing in Canada. The bulk of the exports from Canada, 66% to 67% of the exports, are from foreign-owned firms.
However, Canada, is just one of their branch offices. Their major objective is to go after the North American market. They may not have so much interest in supplying or exporting to other markets in other parts of the world, whether it's the Asia-Pacific or Europe.
Right now, only about 12% of small businesses are in exports and even there, it is just an average of 5% of their sales that are in exports.
However, access to capital is a different subject for a different time. Maybe when it comes to Export Development Canada or BDC, that's where we should take it.
Mr. Smout, you did mention in your January 27 statement that the economic growth has been fuelled by trade and foreign direct investment, and our ongoing prosperity relies heavily on the swift ratification of CUSMA.
As I mentioned earlier, yes, foreign direct investment is very important because of the impact on exports. On the North American market, our exports to the United States, through the earlier NAFTA, have been quite stagnant for the last 10 to 15 years. It has been holding around $320 billion of exports and around $290 billion of imports.
I have some numbers that show the importance of foreign direct investment for Canadian GDP. In fact, it says we are tied with the U.K. on the FDI-to-GDP ratio, which is quite significant.
My only concern is, are we making policies that are catering more to foreign direct investment, or should we have specific policies to encourage Canadian entrepreneurs, mostly small-sized firms, that can export outside the North American markets?