Finance committee  Absolutely. To build on Mr. Harder's comments, at our last annual general meeting, the 150 businesses voted unanimously in favour of endorsing the FIPA, so business really thinks there are enormous advantages here. Looking at the long term, it is a big advantage. So we want to h

Finance committee  That's one of the messages we'd heard from exporters. Because a lot of these natural resource deals are so competitive and prices are set globally, it can be an advantage. You know, if I give you 90 days versus 120 days, it can be an advantage. If you can offer payment in renmi

Finance committee  There may be risks for SMEs, but we tell businesses to discuss this with their banker so that he may offer them options and strategies to protect themselves against the risks of a big fluctuation in the currency's value. To our way of thinking, the idea is to offer a tool. It wi

Finance committee  I think so, yes, but it depends on certain factors. A Chinese buyer may need machines and very specific products. In that case, a price difference of 3% more or 3% less will not matter to him, because he needs that particular product. The price of certain products thus has less e

Finance committee  I think the first thing is the direct foreign exchange savings. There are a few businesses right now that are doing business in renminbi, and it's very costly. There are a whole bunch of administrative loopholes to go through because they have to do RMB business through bank subs

Finance committee  The risk is that China would action the swap and would require $30 billion in Canadian dollars to supply to Chinese banks. China is sitting on foreign exchange reserves of some $430 billion right now, so they have quite a lot of cash.

Finance committee  Exactly. It's pegged to the U.S. dollar, but there's a band where they can trade within 1% or 2% of this.

Finance committee  Well, firstly, with regard to individual businesses, it actually makes life easier for individual businesses because they are better able to hedge now, because there will be a bigger pool of resources.

Finance committee  That's why we were saying thank goodness there's the ability to hedge. It makes it much easier. We talked to some companies and actually some of the banks that said there are Canadian companies that are doing business in renminbi now, but it's so difficult to hedge. You have to

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am honoured to appear today before the members of the committee. I'm very excited to be here today to talk about Canada's new renminbi hub for two reasons. First, the internationalization of the renminbi is perhaps the biggest megatrend in global finan

Finance committee  Absolutely. In answer to the first part of your question, the trade agreements are huge. CETA is free trade with 300 million and $17 billion of GDP. It's massive. It is 20% of global GDP, so we think it's very important. On the second point, absolutely. One of the key recommend

Finance committee  Yes, lower it. They should go down with unemployment as long as we have a stronger.... The 50-50 is important.

Finance committee  There are quite a lot of taxes—even some of our tax accountants who are members say that it's quite complicated now. In terms of how to pay for the tax reductions, we're saying that an overall reduction in some of the tax credits would enable us to lower the overall rates and sim

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. When we were looking at measures to improve trade and trade with emerging markets, we heard something from businesses about every country in the G-7 having a development finance institute, an institute that provides financing for development. That's quite differe

Finance committee  When we're looking at development aid, what works best isn't providing just straightforward grants but actually providing the financing to build those infrastructures to create the private sector. A lot of those institutions and businesses in Ghana can't borrow five- or ten-year