Thank you, Madam Chair.
When we speak about the Canadian Commercial Corporation and Invest in Canada, I would prefer to have the chief executive officers of these organizations here so that we could ask them about some operational details. However, since the senior officials from International Trade and Industry Canada are here, maybe I can ask them certain questions.
First, the Canadian Commercial Corporation has been in existence since 1946 and is a prime actor in the defence production sharing agreement that Canada and the U.S. have had since about 1950 or 1956.
However, when I look at the operations and the results of CCC, in 2021 the value of the contracts signed was just $1.35 billion. That's compared to Canadian exports in 2022 of $777 billion, and that is rounding it up. Even for that small number, as the international prime contractor CCC is supposed to help Canadian companies get export commitments, orders from countries—they are not big—for which CCC will become the exporter as far as government-to-government contracts go, yet the amount was just $474 million last year. It's so low.
Even for future plans, if you look at them, I think the value of contracts signed has gone from $1.35 billion in 2021 to just around $1.49 billion in 2025-26. Why is this so unambitious? We have about 15 free trade agreements with around 51 countries, so why is CCC so unambitious in assisting Canadian exporters?