International Trade committee  Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you very much for inviting the Canada-Poland Chamber of Commerce to speak to you today. The CPCC is dedicated to the promotion, development, and expansion of business, trade, and investment opportunities between Canada and Poland, as well a

International Trade committee  As for immigration, I don't have a particular program in mind because I'm not too familiar with all of the programs right now. I know there are many different ones, but most of them, as far as skilled trades are concerned, involve an invitation from the particular business. That

International Trade committee  Sorry.

International Trade committee  The last issue, as far as the CETA is concerned, we obviously think it's a great agreement. The problem is that, first, it's not quite ratified. It's already working, but there is a lack of information for Canadian businesses on how to use it, really. The regulations are hard to

International Trade committee  We don't do much. Our organization does mostly networking and facilitating, so we don't have resources to provide special courses to train newcomers. I can tell you from my experience that there are two issues. The first one is adapting to the new country. I came from Poland wit

International Trade committee  I agree. It's a great agreement, but as I said before, we are lacking information on how to practically use it. Large companies will manage. They will hire lawyers and will do it, but medium and small companies, which actually provide the most employment, are totally left in the

International Trade committee  Those are happening, but, as I said, there is no set of regulations—or simple instructions, I would rather say, because we don't need to read thousands of pages of bureaucratic language; we would need a translator for that. I think that some simple instructions that we can get an

International Trade committee  Do we help other ethnic chambers to do what we do, to sort of teach them and guide them?

International Trade committee  I don't think we do that, no.

International Trade committee  Those are all good ideas. I don't know how helpful we could be. We are a relatively small organization based on volunteers only. We don't have an office, per se.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. We would like to get involved in things like that.

International Trade committee  Yes, absolutely. I agree with Karima that knowledge of opportunities quite often gets disseminated from people to people, not through programs, not through official statements, or even announcements by governments. People usually learn from one another about how to get a job, fin

International Trade committee  First of all, because the majority of Polish businesses are small and medium-sized, it's hard for them to undertake the policy of exporting. It's more complicated, more capital intensive. That's one reason. Then, the regulations were so much more complicated. Poland went through

International Trade committee  If our big brother from the south would care enough, that would do the trick.

International Trade committee  I speak a little bit of French.