Mr. Speaker, coming off a record year of export increases, I am pleased to inform members of the House that in the latest statistics for the month of August we reached an all time record of $23.3 billion. That is an export level that we reached for the first time. Furthermore, we reached a trade surplus in that same month of again a record of some $4 billion.
For the first time in a dozen years we turned the corner in terms of the current account surplus. We are getting new trading companies involved in this trading operation, particularly small and
medium size businesses because that is where we are creating the jobs.
For every billion dollars of new exports, 11,000 jobs are sustained in this country. We are becoming more proactive. We are retooling, re-engineering our services so that the small and medium size enterprises continue to grow, continue to provide for record export levels.