International Trade committee  I'll add that the minister's SME advisory board recommended the market expansion loan. They worked on it for a year through EDC and BDC, which resulted in a product that addressed a problem with SMEs. If you take a look, it's almost like a credit card, but at a very reasonable ra

International Trade committee  I understand the importance of having that type of facility, but I don't think it falls within the mandate of our department to work with that. I know our colleagues at Industry Canada have done quite a bit of work in providing high-speed Internet across the country. I don't know

International Trade committee  I think the point was more that science and technology is an attractor of investment. We gave examples, and I talked earlier about having clusters in a knowledge-based industry. So if we're talking pharmaceuticals, for example, we can market the cluster arrangements we have in pl

International Trade committee  Yes, because the actual investment in the infrastructure is being done by different organizations that have been fed through the science and technology strategy, for example. So CFI is investing in R and D infrastructure. Genome Canada is investing in the life sciences sector--pr

International Trade committee  I believe we're number 16.

International Trade committee  That's in the OECD. In the types of programs I described with India and China, we have money allocated that allows us to connect. Just to give you an example of a typical project, two research institutions in Montreal, with Pratt & Whitney, together with a research institut

International Trade committee  If it's a constituent, the first place to start would be our regional office. As Ken mentioned, we have 17 regional offices across the country. They're a conduit into our network. Again, it would be a question of working with them and deciding the best market to go to, depending

International Trade committee  This is pretty close to my heart; I work on this quite a bit. It's an ecosystem. If you unpack it there are different dimensions in the ecosystem, and part of it is cultural. I hate to say this, in a way, but part of it is how we have grown up, how we've approached the academic

International Trade committee  To bring some precision to the question, are you talking about in terms of branding money to promote Canada as an investment destination, or are you talking about when you say products promotion publicity?

International Trade committee  Okay.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. That is a very interesting question. We have been investing in science and technology for a number of years. Quite frankly, if you take a look at how our R and D system is viewed globally, people look at it much as they look at our banking system now and say

International Trade committee  I have spent two years of my life doing human resources. One of the challenges we have is that every year we move 700 people between the trade and the foreign affairs sides. You have to understand how that process works. One of the changes we made, to support what Ken has said, i

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. As Ken just noted, we cannot lose sight of the importance of participating in international trade and investment, and we can't lose sight of the fact that we are a trading nation. You heard Ken mention how the global commer