International Trade committee  I'm happy to provide a few points of context. As Leigh mentioned in his remarks, we work with major cities across Canada for our programming. We also, closer to home, work with the 34 municipalities that are the Toronto-Waterloo corridor. We view this as a large economic zone. If you think of economic zones in other parts of the world, if you look to Australia or look to markets in Asia, there's much more attention on what the conditions are for success for those economic zones.

International Trade committee  My focus would be simply that I think we have incredible market access. As I alluded to, I spent 15 years living in Asia, running Canadian businesses there and then the Ivey Business School. When I was coming back into this role, the board of trade was doing a study on our SMEs and trade.

International Trade committee  Madam Chair, time permitting, I wouldn't mind responding as well. Prior to moving back to Toronto, I was running Ivey Business School's Asia campus out of Hong Kong. I can echo what Rhonda is saying. Our biggest competition for Canada was not the U.S. The U.S. was on a different level in terms of how Asian students were looking at university opportunities.

International Trade committee  I'm going to let Leigh take that because Leigh runs our recovery activation program, which was developed in May for specifically the conditions you're discussing.

International Trade committee  As a country, our businesses are in the position to benefit from the federal government's commitment to diversifying trade. I certainly agree with the comments by Mr. Dade about the need for engagement with target markets and solidifying our movement of goods capacity within the country.

International Trade committee  It's nice to see you. Thanks so much. Thank you to the committee for inviting us to speak on Canada’s international trade during and after COVID. As mentioned, I'm president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade. Joining me today is my colleague Leigh Smout, president of the World Trade Centre Toronto, the board’s trade services arm.

Transport committee  If I could speak to it in the context of the southern Ontario work that we've done, it's also looking at where we have capacity in that geography. We should look at Welland. We're looking actually at Hamilton because the airport, the port, and the rail access there has capacity.

Transport committee  We, being the Toronto Region Board of Trade, in conjunction with the other chambers, and the Toronto-Waterloo corridor, are looking at that being a potential staging point for goods coming across the border that could be redeployed through various modes to get to the parts they need to across the region, and reciprocally, for goods going down, to use that as a staging point.

Transport committee  I agree. I have a quick point on that. We coordinate all of our research with the same researchers who work with the Great Lakes economic council ,so we have a complete picture, and the pain points are on the Ontario side. It's not so much on the U.S. side; it really is a matter of once the goods get across the border.

Transport committee  Your point is extremely well taken. It's fundamental that we have some form of regional economic blueprint that anchors that planning process. We are going to be doing a pilot for CGCC in the Toronto-Waterloo corridor. We're working with several academic institutions and other organizations to look at population growth, economic trends, infrastructure needs for the economy, that type of thing, to give us that kind of plan.

Transport committee  Certainly, with the whole concept or premise of the national urban strategy being anchored by a regional plan, it really helps lift the discussion and the understanding of needs. For instance, rather than debating a single track of transit it's looking across this entire economic zone in terms of the big picture, what's needed, and how we look at different mechanisms to fund it.

Transport committee  I agree with the comments about the timing of funding and advancing it. The other piece that I would speak to, particularly in the context of the greater Toronto and Hamilton area, even through to Waterloo, is that increasingly we're working with the cities to say, let's not think of it as a city project, because the reality is that our workforce and our businesses operate across the entire zone.

Transport committee  Certainly. I'm happy to address that. First, as it pertains to lapsed funding, one of the biggest challenges we are seeing is the time it takes for projects to get far enough along the queue to access that funding. An approach such as the one we're proposing, enabling the city regions to have access to the funding at different stages rather than waiting until the later stages, would enable us to get more projects under way.

Transport committee  Yes. We did a series of reports last year on the movement of goods in the Toronto-Waterloo corridor. As you're aware, the corridor was recently awarded one of the supercluster initiative bids for advanced manufacturing, because we have density of manufacturing and technology happening in that corridor.

Transport committee  Bonjour. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for inviting me here today. As has been mentioned, I'm President and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, but I'm also this year's chair of the Canadian Global Cities Council, or CGCC for short. This is a coalition of the chambers of commerce of the eight largest metro regions in Canada.