Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to inform the House about Trade 98 which took place recently in Magog, Quebec.
Twenty-five leading women exporters were invited to work together with senior government officials to address trade barriers facing women entrepreneurs.
The focus of Trade 98 was to learn why export markets are not being tapped to their full extent by women entrepreneurs and to launch a national research program to address and remedy the situation.
This research is being undertaken by the trade research coalition which was established by the Minister for International Trade following the overwhelming success of last November's Canadian businesswomen's trade mission to Washington, D.C. Their findings will be the basis for trade policy discussions at next May's Canada-U.S. Women's Trade Summit.
As I have said many times in this House, women business owners are a major force in our economy today leading over 700,000 small and medium size businesses and employing in excess of 1.7 million Canadians. While this trend continues to grow, this government continues to work with women business owners.