Thank you.
I'd like to talk a little bit about export supports now since we are talking about market diversification. The chair and I previously served on the international trade committee, and one of the huge weaknesses that Canada has—and this has been under the current government and the reason we have the largest trade deficit in our history, tragically under this government—is that there aren't any on-the-ground supports. When I was going on trade missions, I was meeting trade commissioners who would tell me confidentially that they didn't have the budget to buy a cup of coffee for a potential client of a Canadian product or service. That's how bad it is. Yet the main exporting countries around the world, the ones that have succeeded, are those that provide substantial on-the-ground support for their exports. Australia is one example. They spend $50 for every $1 that Canada spends on export product promotion.
I'm wondering if you have any sense of what the on-the-ground supports are around the world, or if they even exist at this point, for Canadian energy exports. If we're talking about market diversification, it would be helpful to know what exists already or whether the department or the government has done any analysis about what would need to be put into place for market diversification primarily of value-added products.