International Trade committee  Certainly, the trade commissioner service is very focused on.... The vast majority of our clients are small and medium-sized enterprises, and we put a particular emphasis on what we would call “under-represented” exporters traditionally: women, indigenous people, members of the LGBTQ2+ community, Black-owned businesses, youth-owned businesses and others.

International Trade committee  Thanks for your ongoing support of the trade commissioner service. They certainly appreciate that. We have a network of 44 trade commissioners who are dedicated to foreign direct investment around the world in our missions abroad. They also work very closely with a lot of the provincial representatives, who are increasingly co-located in missions abroad and work very closely together.

International Trade committee  On the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, both the Prime Minister and Minister Ng spoke about this last week. Obviously this is a U.S. initiative. We have very close ties already with the United States, and a very integrated economy with them through CUSMA and with the Indo-Pacific region through the CPTPP.

International Trade committee  Madam Chair, if you will allow me, I'll turn to my colleague Katie Curran for the answer to that question.

International Trade committee  Not at all. I'm happy to answer questions.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I am happy to be here with everyone today. I want to acknowledge that I am speaking from the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people. I would also like to note that we're meeting at a time when the Russian illegal invasion of Ukraine is a really grave threat to world peace, and it's obviously well known that Canada stands with Ukraine and condemns the unjustifiable invasion, which has challenged the rules-based international order.

International Trade committee  Yes. I'd be happy to. Virtual trade missions and actually a lot of the activities that the trade commissioner service is involved in, including the work that we do on responsible business conduct, are communicated out through a number of different channels. We have regional offices that are all across the country, as a matter of fact.

International Trade committee  I'd be happy to elaborate on this a little bit. Actually, I should correct the member that on PDAC and on Collision, my team has been very actively engaged. We've had delegations come in, virtually, from all over the world. We have facilitated hundreds of B2B meetings for these delegations to come in and connect with Canadian businesses in those different sectors.

International Trade committee  Is the member talking about risk insurance?

International Trade committee  Madam Chair, as I understand it, EDC has not offered political risk insurance for some time. If you're talking about the letters of credit and the other kinds of supports, they offer that on a commercial basis. As you know, they are an arm's length organization, so they make those determinations for themselves as to what their rates will be.

International Trade committee  Madam Chair, I do know that EDC's services to SMEs have increased significantly over the last little while. I can get back to the member with some more information about their rates, if that is of interest.

International Trade committee  Madam Chair, if that is directed to me in terms of how the trade commissioner service operates, I think the answer is that we are increasingly going digital in our service offering. We have seen some really interesting opportunities come out of that, which we will continue to explore.

International Trade committee  Yes, I understand. Thank you. Madam Chair, if I may respond, my team has been doing a tremendous amount of training for folks across the board to help people understand how to take advantage of the FTAs. We have new tools—digital tools—available to businesses to look at and find easily the tariffs and also to find opportunities in new markets as a result of the FTAs that are out there.

International Trade committee  Yes, certainly. Briefly, we have made major investments in rolling out additional Canadian technology accelerator programs. These have gone digital and, actually, in the virtual space, have been connected up amongst themselves to offer even greater opportunities. That program is working very well.

International Trade committee  Thank you for the question. Madam Chair, certainly my team around the world has been deployed in a kind of reverse trade commissioner role, in some sense, in doing the sourcing from the very beginning. They developed a whole book of all the really excellent PPE that's out there, and they have been working diligently to make sure we have it.