Finance committee  Last year for EDC, of that $85 billion or $86 billion, $14 billion of that support went to the forestry sector and some 1,234 companies that we dealt with, with 12% growth. As I said, that support was a combination of three things, primarily. One was receivables insurance. Thei

Finance committee  No. They're consistent with those agreements. In fact, even historically, when EDC stepped in on behalf of the government to provide a financing facility for early return of rebates, that was also done in a manner fully consistent with WTO obligations.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. While the focus is on the new powers that would give EDC the ability to participate more fully in the domestic market, EDC is not a stranger to doing it. In fulfilling our mandate of helping companies in their international trade objectives, very often t

Finance committee  Yes, we do. The bulk is insurance, which the banks then lend against, but we do provide direct loans as well.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Let me cover a couple of things with respect to that question. The first is that yes, EDC is a lender and EDC is an insurer. I think sometimes people gravitate to EDC's financing capability and don't understand what insurance actually does. Insurance is actually a financing-ena

Finance committee  In the example I gave you of Nova Chemicals, we stepped up for $100 million, but we were insisting that the banks put additional money into the deal. And they did. They put an additional $50 million into the deal. In that particular case, we approached it as being part of the sol

Finance committee  I thank the member for the question. The effect could be in a number of areas. The budget introduces new legislation for EDC and a temporary reprieve from the regulations that would restrict us in the domestic market. Our core business would continue to operate provided we had s

Finance committee  It could limit our options. It would make it very difficult for EDC to play any significant role in the domestic economy. That's important, because we have a number of corporates, at all sizes, who have short-term growing requirements. In many cases they have bank credit, but th

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. I'm going to answer in English. Global trade today, globalization, means that markets have become very integrated, and this is a concept that EDC has talked about: integrative trade. So in addition to export, for companies to be successful in their i

Finance committee  Companies will and must seek out the most competitive way to organize their production to be successful in the international market. In globalization it has meant that companies have had to look at how they globalize their production at the same time as globalizing their sales. T

Finance committee  Yes, I think the committee can monitor it in a few ways. One, once the legislation is passed, EDC will be able to enter into the domestic market in three ways. One will be by way of re-insurance that we bring to the domestic credit insurance market. We will be tracking both the n

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, I thank the honourable member for his question. Let me talk about how EDC is stepping up in this and how that stepping up will continue through 2009 and will continue to unfold when and if the new legislation is passed, thereby broadening EDC's powers further. Go

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for the opportunity you've given me to speak to you here today. Your examination is timely and important, particularly in the current economic situation. Access to credit is vital for companies of all sizes. As a crown

International Trade committee  In simple terms, EDC is really associated with facilitating foreign transactions, be they export or be they investment abroad. We're doing that with a variety of products, insurance products and financing products. In that way we're helping Canadian companies to build up, but we'