Finance committee  Thank you for that. One of the finest parts of my job is that I get the opportunity to visit places like Prince Rupert. I understand your attachment to the area. You're correct in saying that there's a lot of activity and there's a lot of hope in Prince Rupert surrounding thin

Finance committee  I will ask my colleague to look through the vast amount of information he has to find the figures and results achieved thus far in defence procurement. Our role is to point out to SMEs where the major purchasing opportunities are in Canada's defence industry. We have played this

Finance committee  On the small business participation in exports, we have fairly recently re-engaged with the Province of British Columbia. With the Ministry of International Trade and with Global Affairs Canada's regional office in British Columbia, we have participated in a sort of regional trad

Finance committee  I may ask my colleague here if he can dig out from our rather impressive binder of information here—as you can see, I brought it with me—some of the targets we have in our report on plans and priorities for our trade and investment activity. Sorry, Martin, to put you on the spo

Finance committee  In fact, we have a project under way, which is jointly funded with WD, the Province of British Columbia, and the Business Council of B.C. It goes by the name of HQ Vancouver, headquarters Vancouver. It's aimed precisely at increasing the attraction to the Lower Mainland of headqu

Finance committee  If I may comment on the latter, on the decline in coal production, it is palpable how it has affected the economy in B.C., and not only the direct extraction activities of companies like Teck resources. Teck is one of the biggest mining companies in Canada, and they have had to c

Finance committee  Thanks very much for the question. As you correctly identified, it's one of the major issues facing B.C. right now. I should probably start by saying that I've lived in British Columbia for eight years, and you are looking at an eight-time loser in the British Columbia housing m

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's my great pleasure to be in front of the committee today. I'll be talking to you about the state of the B.C. economy and some of the challenges and opportunities therein, as well as giving you a bit of a thumbnail sketch of what we do in W