International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, honourable members. Welcome to our very rainy city today. It's a good thing we're inside taking comments. I'm pleased to have this opportunity to present to you on behalf of the more than 12,000 businesses and 120,000 professionals that make

International Trade committee  The trade accelerator program does just that, but I think the next generation of what we want to do with it is what I would say is, adopt a sector. For each of our competitive clusters, we want to be able to put support for them to identify which of the markets around the world a

International Trade committee  I would say one example where we are succeeding is in human health sciences. The diaspora and the diversity we have here in Toronto is enabling us to do research and development for citizens around the world. If I look at some work that we've been doing with the City of Brampton

International Trade committee  Interestingly enough, China was a big market. We thought there'd be more of a fear factor, but we've seen a lot looking at China. For some of the examples we've had, we've been able to connect them with students studying at U of T who are from Hong Kong. In some cases they've bee

International Trade committee  There are examples of some companies that have come through saying that at this point they're just not ready. We're continuing to work with them, and over time we'll see whether we'll navigate it. The one thing I did want to say about the program is, please think of Toronto as

International Trade committee  I was just going to say that, in the way the TAP works, we have three major corporate sponsors that fund it and that identify and nominate clients in, one of which is RBC. They're quite involved in helping with currency strategies and export-related strategies as well, from a fin

International Trade committee  We're currently in discussions with the corporate partners who have helped us build this program about taking this nationally. What that would look like is we would continue to operate it using the platform we have created, which is this 90-day program, plus we have a former memb

International Trade committee  I would say, from a change perspective, there is nothing we have identified. I would tap more of the industry sector expertise on that. We're focusing more at looking at it from the business community perspective, and how do we take advantage of all these growth markets. I wouldn

International Trade committee  I think there are two ways to answer that. Number one, there are gross markets out there that are not just the U.S., and I think the important thing about these agreements is that they give us preferential access. Number two, it raises awareness when businesses are hearing abou

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 o

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 r

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 ha

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 thin

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

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