International Trade committee  Develop a good method of outreach to get businesses there; standardize that. Work it until it works well.

International Trade committee  The passport issue?

International Trade committee  Is that for people crossing borders? I'm sorry.

International Trade committee  No. I would speak for members. As was mentioned, I'm a member of the small business advisory committee, and for some companies, that's so. I think you've heard from witnesses who have said if they could have dual passports, or two passports, because.... I'm not going to pick on a

International Trade committee  Céline, I think you can probably comment better on the scientific and technical aspects. To your point, sir, I don't have the figures and I would like to support what Céline has said about really having the data. That's where some of my suggestions come in, even for having a re

International Trade committee  One of the things was a very good point from McKinsey, which was to encourage the growth of sister-cities. These are British Columbia figures. Twenty of the sister-city agreements that British Columbia cities have are with Japan; five are with China, and one is with southeast Asi

International Trade committee  I think that would probably depend on the country you're dealing with. I think for this sister-city pairing, to continue with the mandate, we would do that through our target markets in emerging markets, and the country and its state of government and so forth would determine the

International Trade committee  To answer the first part of your question, I think probably that smart exporters, when they're starting out, try to go into a country where there's a business culture match. Maybe that's why there's a tendency to go to the U.S., because there is a match there. I would think that

International Trade committee  I have not attended the events. I am aware of them. In fact, it was one of my recommendations that I made to the committee. It may be expensive in time and money, perhaps, but it is this kind of face-to-face event that is bringing companies into the room and bringing the various

International Trade committee  Because I'm not an expert in the bank, I would only be able to offer my personal view, in that there are well-known human rights issues in China. There are practical issues: if everybody else is joining the club, should we? Perhaps they will do a second round of intaking members.

International Trade committee  Well, one of the—

International Trade committee  In services, look at the IFIs, international finance, the Asian Development Bank, and see what they are doing. They buy a lot of services and we're very competitive there.

International Trade committee  I'm not completely familiar with those countries. I know from my experience in Vietnam that.... Coming back to having a strategy, as far as I know, Australia has a very robust strategy on exporting its educational services. When I saw them in Vietnam they were very active there.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me, and the chair as well. It's a very great honour. I'd also like to thank the clerk and her team for all their assistance in enabling me to come. As the chair mentioned, my name is Ramona Materi. I am the pre