International Trade Committee on Jan. 30th, 2024

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

If you could share that information, that would be great.

I'll just go further in some of the services that are provided by the trade commissioners' offices. You see, for example, the CanExport innovation program, which helps small and medium-sized firms, academic institutions and non-governmental research centres in Canada to commercialize their technologies. It talks about programs that help pursue collective research and developments projects with foreign partners, for example.

Are there any rules in place with regard to the protection of IP that is created through some of the funding that's provided by the federal government for this?

[Sara Wilshaw]

Madam Chair, as a matter of fact, there was a separate budget decision that allocated additional funding to CanExport specifically to support IP protection in international markets. The team has been marketing that. We market our services to try to get more companies to access that funding to help them make sure they know what the risks are and make sure they are utilizing all of the government's supports and services in trying to protect their IP.

In addition to that, if I may, Madam Chair, we have dedicated staff who help advise on IP risks in certain key, high-risk markets.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

That's excellent.

Now, would that same rule apply to the Canadian international innovation program as well?

[Sara Wilshaw]

The Canadian international innovation program is designed to support co-innovation between partner countries. We have science, tech and innovation agreements with, I think, 15 different partners. Each comes to the table with a certain amount of money, and we support research and development for the purposes of co-innovation and commercialization of new technologies. That funding is designed to support those kinds of activities.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I have one quick question, being in a border community myself, my home community. Mr. Cannings talked about the notion.... I think my colleague talked about it earlier as well, and you mentioned it. It's about the whole educational component in letting those small and medium-sized enterprises know of your services and how they can come forward and make use of your services.

I think that's one of the biggest detriments. They simply don't know that the government has opportunities to assist. Could you just provide some examples of what you do to share your information out there with the community?

[Sara Wilshaw]

I'm very happy to start, or did you mean to address that to Mairead?

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I'll start with EDC.

[Mairead Lavery]

Thank you.

One of the biggest forums is webinars and, of course, the website, because everybody wants digital, and they want to access the resources 24-7. We've been structured to make those resources available to people when they need them. Just last week, we had a webinar with over 2,000 people on how to get started on exporting. For the first time, we co-promoted that with the trade commissioner service, with many of the different team Canada trade missions, and it had a huge impact.

I see the chair waving at me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Well, I'm just trying to complete the round.

Mr. Sheehan has the last five minutes.

Thank you.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentations and your work on this very important file.

I'm co-chair of the Canada-Japan interparliamentary group. I've had the opportunity to speak with some of the Japanese parliamentarians. They were here in Ottawa in August. There were people here such as the ambassador. They are very high on the Indo-Pacific strategy. They really are. There are other countries that are, as well. There's so much opportunity.

As part of the Indo-Pacific strategy, there's a process for trying to promote peace and security in the area. In particular, there are some joint exercises with the military. You have Russia. Japan and Canada have put sanctions on Russia, which is now running exercises in what they call the Northern Territories. You have China in the South China Sea and East China Sea. There are a lot of challenges, but we need to secure that.

In securing that, Japan has also realized the opportunities between Canada and Japan. It's just the Pacific Ocean. It's free and clear. They are very hungry right now to do more. They are the largest direct investor from Asia. You've seen Honda now exploring EV batteries again, probably in Ontario. Who knows?

I would like you to make some comments on the opportunities in the region, in particular for the businesses over here. I will suggest to you that it's very well known over there. What are we doing to promote the Indo-Pacific strategy to our businesses and collaborators—the Canadian ones—to realize the opportunities that are there?

[Sara Wilshaw]

Thanks for the question on this.

Japan occupies a very special place in my heart. It was my first posting, and I have very fond memories. I can see a lot of change, as a matter of fact, in how the relationship has progressed over the years, which is quite exciting.

In terms of how you bring those opportunities in front of Canadians, I think Ms. Lavery was talking about the webinars. We do specific webinars on countries. We do them on specific sectors, as well, within those countries. We try to put our information out there as broadly as we can. Running the trade missions is a great way for folks to experiment and explore those areas.

Trade missions aren't the only events we run. I'm not going to get the number right, but we have several hundred trade commissioners in the Indo-Pacific area. They are all across the region. Every day, they are out there speaking to local businesses to understand their needs and interests. They feed those back into our offices across Canada. They use that in our databases to find Canadians who might be able to respond to those opportunities. We call them up and talk to them. We present the opportunity. We help them understand how we can de-risk it through partnerships and other supports, and by giving them the right contacts and putting those pieces together for them. We try to do that as much as possible.

Going back to the last question, which was about how we get to the very small businesses—93% of our clients are small and medium-sized businesses—we also use, at a very general level, search engine optimization and other tools like that. When you type “Canada” and “export”, you get the trade commissioner service and EDC. They come right up at the very top of the search. We try to make it as easy as possible for folks to find us.

We recognize that we need to keep going out into the regions. That is why we have offices all across the country to do that. They maintain the linkages and work with our partners in the provinces, territories and municipalities to try to make it not hard to find us.

[Mairead Lavery]

I would like to add to that.

Once the companies in Japan know about Canada and are willing to invest in Canada, we have to broaden that. We have to help Canadian companies get into their supply chains. We have to make more Japanese companies interested in what Canadian capabilities look like. That's a very important matching activity that both the trade commissioner service and EDC do. Us going in and understanding the needs within Japanese companies and how Canadian companies can support these is a much more aggressive strategy than just waiting for them to come. We have to get in there.

At EDC, we have a couple of programs. There's a market leader program, where we try to engage with some of the leading companies in these markets to subsequently introduce Canadian companies to them. We also need to work with the Japanese companies—you chose Japan—that are present in Canada. How do we introduce them to the supply chain that exists in Canada so that, globally, the company then starts talking about the talent and resources in Canada?

There isn't one silver bullet. We have to go at this from every angle. We have to make sure that everyone knows what Canadian companies can do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Thank you very much to our witnesses, and apologies for the delay. Thank you for the invaluable information you've given us today.

Again, our apologies to the second panel, but we'll look forward to seeing you at the next opportunity we have.

Thanks again to all of you.

The meeting is adjourned.