Certainly. What I was referring to were Canada's big trade support agencies, such as the EDC's trade commissioner service and those agencies. We've found that our members and exporters who use those services really like them; they're very helpful, and they do the job. The problem is that when we survey our membership, most of the membership does not know that these places exist, let alone the specific programs you've just mentioned, which are very helpful.
There's been a retrenchment over the last number of years on having people from these agencies embedded, whether it's with us in the trade association or on the ground, and having offices where people can walk in and talk to someone in person. That has been pulled back quite considerably.
We could pretty much track where that sort of aimlessness began, and it was when that retrenchment happened. Certainly, having more people out in the field would be beneficial, but it's also about leveraging us in the trade association world to help the government connect with these people.
Picture, if you will, that you're an SME exporter and you're saying, “Gee, I wonder how I can increase my market in country X.” You'll talk to your accountant, you'll talk to your legal advisor and you'll talk to your staff. Your default setting is not to think, “Gee, I wonder what the government has to offer.” That's where trade associations and other people who are linked in can be leveraged.
The other side of it, too, is the training—the trade skills training. There are a number of programs, FITT being one of them, that we've partnered with in the past. That creates the capacity within Canada of skills for trading for that profession. Most Canadian companies are SMEs and have a certain bandwidth of what they can take on in terms of skills training. These types of programs, with proper funding and proper outreach, could be very beneficial.