International Trade Committee on Oct. 30th, 2020

[Duane McMullen]

Yes, we look closely at that number, and we always want it to be a better number.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We'll go on to Mr. Sheehan for five minutes.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the presenters for the presentation. Thanks for your hard work. I know that you've been working extremely hard, like many of our great civil servants who have really stepped up to the plate during COVID-19. I want to recognize that. The roles that you're connecting everyone into in acting as that facilitator of trade during these times have really been critical in connecting the government to small and medium-sized enterprises, to the large auto sector, etc.

I represent Sault Ste. Marie. As many people on this trade committee know, I represent the second-largest steel-producing area in Canada, which plays a very important role in a lot of supply chains: the oil and gas industry, the auto industry and just manufacturing in general. I would like to zero in on the auto sector in particular, because we've seen it close because of COVID and we've seen it open up.

From your perspective, where are we now and where are the areas that we might want to concentrate on to continue to support the auto sector as it relates to trade and those important supply chains? The steel that's made in Sault Ste. Marie is made with coal and iron ore from the United States. It's getting put on those trucks, ships and rail lines, coming up here and being made into steel, and then being put back on trucks. Sixty per cent of Algoma Steel's exports go to the United States. They head back across that border.

Can I get your comments on that, please, particularly on the trucking industry and on going across the border as well? Thank you.

[Sara Wilshaw]

I recall seeing tables earlier on. I'm sure we can provide some of this information about specifically the number of trucks that cross the border. Obviously, there was a very strong interest in maintaining as much as possible of the open and free movement of essential goods and services, including trucks bringing essential supplies and other things into the country for the auto sector and all sectors, including making sure the shelves in our grocery stores are stocked.

In terms of what the trade commissioner service is doing, we are working very closely with our clients. We stay in touch with the industry associations, as well as the provincial and territorial counterparts, to ensure that we are looking for every opportunity to support their businesses, whether that's maintaining or finding additional or alternate supplies or alternate customers, and doing what we can to make sure their businesses are able to operate.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you very much.

It's so critical to keep that open. Here there was a lot of nervousness, obviously, when we weren't too sure which way the American administration was going. It looked like they were, at one point, going to do a full shutdown. I was pleased to see that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were able to smooth things over, because that would have just devastated towns like Sault Ste. Marie. Thank you.

With COVID-19, we're seeing more and more people do things via the Internet. Obviously, we're doing this meeting virtually. In Ontario, we had an announcement for small and medium-sized businesses back in June through FedDev and FedNor, which I'm the parliamentary secretary for, of about $500 million for SMEs in three levels, which are sort of beginners, medium and then advanced. Could you make comments on businesses, not only in Ontario but in particular small and medium-sized enterprises, and how they're adapting to COVID-19 in using commerce-enabled websites or just websites to promote trade? Do you have any recommendations?

[Sara Wilshaw]

I'm pleased to talk a little bit about this and how we're supporting our clients and Canadian companies in going virtual. In fact, this is the subject of a big part of the program that Mr. Thornley manages through our regional offices. Certainly that's there. We have enhanced services for digital industries, trade, intellectual property and e-commerce that were part of our trade diversification strategy that was launched some time ago.

As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we began to orient ourselves towards these kinds of platforms even before the pandemic. We created 21 new positions in key markets like Tokyo, Mexico, Delhi, Bangalore, Brussels, Washington, D.C., our mission to ASEAN, Shanghai, Beijing and other places around the world in order to support our Canadian companies in accessing these virtual platforms, understanding the risks associated with them, protecting their IT and their financial transactions appropriately, and so on.

In fact, I hear from my chief economist that the number of Canadian SMEs exporting went from 19,600 in February to 15,600 in April, and is now back up to 18,400. That's 6% lower than February but a significant improvement. A lot of that is due to the fact that they have been able to access online platforms and e-commerce ways of connecting with their clients.

I should just mention very quickly that the trade commissioner service is not the only service helping Canadian companies do this. There are programs through ISED and other government departments, as well as the provinces and territories themselves, that are working closely with Canadian companies to help them access these opportunities online and to get themselves onto e-commerce platforms.

I'll defer to you, Madam Chair, on whether there's time for Mr. Thornley to add anything here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you. Just to keep up with the schedule to give all the members the opportunity, I'm on to Mr. Lobb for five minutes.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Chair, I would like to raise a technical detail.

I am told that the people on the telephone have had no interpretation for about five minutes. We do have it here and we can hear it fine, but it seems that people attending by telephone are not hearing it.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

On a point of order, we have no translation, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Yes, I noticed that. Just give us a second.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Christine Lafrance]

Madam Chair, may we suspend for five minutes, please?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

We will suspend for five minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Given the fact that we have to do committee business, this will be the last opportunity for questions.

Mr. Lobb, you have five minutes, please.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My first question is a pretty basic question. If I'm a business owner, manufacturer or entrepreneur and I want to do business in a particular country, when I call the office of that particular embassy, consul general or whatever it is, how long does it take for me to get a callback?

[Sara Wilshaw]

Thank you for the question.

We do have a very quick response rate, and we try our best to get back to people as soon as we possibly can—within a matter of hours if that's possible. It depends, obviously, on some time zones. Of course, we also like our clients to stay very close to the regional offices that we have, which are located all across the country. They should be able to get back to them in real time.

We certainly have a service standard that is to get back to them with a response within.... Duane will correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe it is 48 hours. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to find the detailed information we need to answer whatever the question might be, and then we will of course communicate that we are digging further into it and will get back to them.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay. If your standard is 48 hours, what percentage of the time do you meet that standard of 48 hours?

[Sara Wilshaw]

I'm sorry. I misspoke earlier. I have been corrected. We have a standard of five working days for a response, so I was a little ambitious in that, but obviously I do know that our trade commissioners try to get back to their clients as soon as they possibly can. We meet the standard over 90% of the time and we usually respond within 24 hours, but of course, as I said, some issues are more complex and do take a bit more time for us.

If I may finish—I know you don't have a lot of time—we do track our client satisfaction rate very closely, and we take it seriously when the clients tell us that we are not being responsive. We follow up with that office to see what happened and why we weren't able to respond quickly. We try to address those factors as soon as we possibly can.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay.

This summer I was talking to an ambassador who is stationed in Canada. We were having an introductory conversation. The ambassador mentioned to me that they were looking for a particular potential software service and asked me if I knew of any potential companies in Canada that might be able to help them out. I thought that was nice, but at the same time, I thought to myself that in the country where they're looking for this service it seemed odd to me that our trade commissioner or somebody would not be able to connect the dots to that.

My question is, do the trade commissioners in all the countries constantly follow the contracts and the tenders, whether government or private? Do they have a list of companies in Canada that may be able to meet this, and is it refreshed? In this particular case, how could a government contract in that country be missed when there's at least one company in Canada that I'm aware of that could have met that service? How does that happen?

[Sara Wilshaw]

I'm certainly glad the opportunity was raised. I hope it was transmitted to the trade commissioner service for action. As you rightly point out, there very likely is a Canadian company that can meet the needs.

We do have people who watch for tenders and who watch for what's going up and for opportunities all over the world all the time. We reach back to our regional network to see if there are clients who can fulfill that need. Then we reach out to them and present those opportunities. They aren't always taken up. I should be—

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Is there a portal the said trade commissioner enters that filters into a central filter in Canada and that business or other trade commissioners can look at? Or how does it work? How does it get populated so that somebody will actually know this?

[Sara Wilshaw]

I might defer to my colleague Duane McMullen to answer that question. Certainly, we have a website that is quite robust with a lot of information on it.

Duane's team manages that, so perhaps I can defer to him.

[Duane McMullen]

When a trade officer in the field identifies an opportunity, the best way to get action is to connect it directly with the Canadian companies that are capable of acting on those opportunities. That's how we get to that $26 in exports per dollar invested in the trade commissioner service.

In cases where it's not obvious in terms of knowing which Canadian company could action an opportunity, we work with our domestic network. We have trade commissioners in every province across the country. We share those opportunities with our domestic network for them to be able to identify, either directly from the businesses they work with or by working with their provincial counterparts, a business in the province that might be able to take advantage of that opportunity.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I have one last quick question. One of our members mentioned rules-based trade. Everything is rules-based trade. Does any country we deal with actually apply rules-based trade? It would be my opinion that none of them do. They pick the rules when they see fit. I'm looking for one country that would actually do true rules-based trade, other than Canada.

[Kendal Hembroff]

Unfortunately, Chair, there isn't a quick answer to that question. I think maybe it was more of a comment.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

That has to be my time.