International Trade committee  I can be very quick on that. We do have a list of over 60,000 foreign companies we have insured in the past year, so if an exporter asks if they can ship to a certain company, about 60% of the time our computer checks and gives the exporter a green light. That's how refined that system is.

International Trade committee  Thank you. I don't disagree with my colleague; I would just add a couple of things. First, I'm cautious about discounting the United States as a destination for our trade. It may have its problems of late, but it's still home to the most globalized and most dynamic companies in the world.

International Trade committee  The answer is that it is most of those things, but the main thing is that it is about the relationships. We have more than 200 people in the front of our business, so about one-fifth of EDC are people in the relationship business. We call them our business development group, which sounds kind of commercial.

International Trade committee  Certainly. There are two different things that may be insured there. You may be insuring your shipment against the kind of loss that happens when the ship goes down or is delayed in port so that the goods spoil or something like that. Well, the EDC insurance is not about that. It's about credit.

International Trade committee  It's about getting paid, yes. There's a distinction. We're very careful to ensure that when we do a transaction like that, we are pricing just as a private company would, so that we're not crowding out the private sector. That's what I meant about our partnership-preferred philosophy.

International Trade committee  I'll be very brief. We insure the receivables for billions; we insured over $80 billion worth of Canadian exports last year, and a lot of that was in the food business, including business related to potatoes, certainly.

International Trade committee  Absolutely, there are rules they must meet. For every transaction that EDC does, it must pass through our Canadian benefits gate, so it must measure up in terms of the benefits it will deliver to Canada. To give you a quick summary, last year we estimate—I use that term carefully, because we don't know to the decimal point—conservatively that over five cents out of every dollar earned in Canada was generated by transactions of companies using EDC services.

International Trade committee  What I said in my remarks—

International Trade committee  We have 16 foreign representations. We actually have people on the ground in 16 cities around the world. We're always housed in a Canadian consulate or a high commission or an embassy. In fact, usually the office is right beside the trade commissioner's office in that foreign country.

International Trade committee  Certainly, and thank you. Over 80%, possibly closer to 90%, of the companies we work with in a year are SMEs, the small ones probably being around 80%. The number of medium-sized companies is a fairly small relative to the very large number of small companies that use our services.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I recognize some familiar faces around the table from my previous appearances, but this my first time here since being appointed EDC president. I have just a few opening remarks; I'd rather focus on your questions.