International Trade committee  Obviously, continuing to open markets is huge, so let's continue to invest in opening new markets. That's vitally important. With respect to the direct funding, follow some of things I was outlining earlier. Let's not put up too many barriers, let's not create limitations based o

International Trade committee  Are you talking about the accelerator program that is being run by DFATD and some of their—

International Trade committee  I know that there has been interest, particularly among the start-up communities in Canada. There are the funding challenges for those companies that are looking to access capital, but the fact that there is a presence for those start-up companies, particularly the technology com

International Trade committee  I would echo Joy's comments. My team gets an email almost daily right now from our partners in the EU, in particular, for incoming missions. We have one right now coming in from Portugal. We have others coming in from Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Poland. There is a lot of inte

International Trade committee  Yes, I would agree.

International Trade committee  With regard to early signs from our membership, absolutely. The fact that it's been extended to 10 years, that's almost indefinitely. Companies looking at the extension—from what we're hearing from our member networks—are now considering investments in new machinery and new equi

International Trade committee  If I could just add to that, I think that the size of the company, those types of criteria that in the past may have been hurdles to taking advantage of a public program, I don't think that those should limit any company from applying. I think the number one criterion, the number

International Trade committee  In five seconds, from my comments earlier, that would be a perfect example. A company in that situation should be able to apply to this fund. That is a high export-potential type of project. As part of their project, it should be using government services. If they're not, that

International Trade committee  One of the questions that comes up often at the Go Global sessions—it's directly related to your question, and I wanted to mention earlier there was a question around the take-up of these things—is that there are two panels. One of them is about what each of the government agenci

International Trade committee  In order to move the needle here, we need to think strategically around tailoring the funding to projects and companies that have the highest export potential, regardless of the size, so a little funding can go a long way, depending on the company. In terms of the correct model

International Trade committee  Most definitely. Looking at the most recent budget, it was a good year for manufacturers with respect to the accelerated capital costs allowance, which will allow for further investments in machinery and equipment, and write that off over a period of time. The challenges are th

International Trade committee  Not really on the capture side. I was going to just echo that and also echo the comments of the CFIB in the sense that I have a whole host of companies, particularly in the automotive and the aerospace industries, that sell literally to one customer, and they are large OEMs that

International Trade committee  We keep a close eye on the progress. We have surveys that all the participants fill out and submit. I would say we haven't received a single negative survey from people taking the workshop. I think that initially we were probably speaking to the converted in terms of who was a

International Trade committee  I would say that some are existing clients, but they're not necessarily clients of each of the organizations. What you're seeing is clients of the TCS, for example, coming out and meeting folks from EDC and from BDC. We're doing that by raising awareness through our prospects lis

International Trade committee  It could always be improved, but we've changed it quite dramatically since the first time we did the event. I think now we have a fairly good format. If you're going to do this event in smaller communities where these organizations don't necessarily have a footprint, the challeng