International Trade committee  Mr. Chair, with respect to Aecon or other deals coming from some countries—maybe it's China—we have a job to speak to the investment community in China and say, “Here are the sectors in our economy where we would welcome your investments with very few conditions, so let's focus o

International Trade committee  Next Tuesday would be fine.

International Trade committee  If a company just shows up—

International Trade committee  Have done and will do.

International Trade committee  I think some of it is growing the business from our current customers. That certainly exists in the traditional sectors that we've been successful at: aerospace, autos, advanced manufacturing. I think some of the real wins going forward, some of the strategic avenues, are going t

International Trade committee  Yes, and to Mr. Fonseca's question earlier, the multinationals have a business leader here in Canada, and they're the ones who are competing on the global stage to drive the investment here, so those are the conversations that we'll be having on what went wrong or what went right

International Trade committee  Consolidate everything that you've just described, because those who know us, know us well, but many more don't know us than do know us. Consolidate all those very positive attributes, get testimonials from the companies that are here, ask why they're here, and work aggressively

International Trade committee  If I could just add, because this is a super important point for start-ups to global enterprises, in Q1 of this year, Silicon Valley had 100 start-ups that raised $50 million or more. It's a new record. A hundred start-up companies raised that in Q1. That's telling us two things:

International Trade committee  We would be happy to. Just to be clear, Canada has a long history in aerospace and autos, primarily in attracting foreign direct investment. Many of those operations are here because of the strategic infrastructure fund or its predecessors. Any company that has applied successfu

International Trade committee  If I could add, Mr. Fonseca, Amazon's project is an outlier, certainly, in terms of how companies are looking at long-term strategic investments. It's a massive project. At the same time, it's an extraordinary example of what this agency can do. At the time of the Amazon proposal

International Trade committee  I think the drop has been over a couple of decades. I think there is a lot of sharing of that responsibility. We have the strongest economy in the G7. I think when investors are looking for where to deploy dollars, they look at good strong domestic economic growth. I think one o

International Trade committee  First of all, talent is one of Canada's greatest inherent resources. The reforms in the immigration department and fast-tracking of skilled labour into Canada are going to be enormous attributes for this organization and the entire country. Our ability to be prescriptive or direc

International Trade committee  Thank you for your comments and your question. In terms sectors and mandates in the sector, I think that rather than being prescriptive, we will be doing it based on research and data. Capital will flow where it makes sense for it to flow. Our job is to present to investors wher

International Trade committee  Singapore is pretty good. Ireland is pretty good. The U.S. spends a ton of dough on this stuff with an organization called SelectUSA. I think it may be a bit too big and too cumbersome, but it certainly does a pretty good job. Perception is reality. Another part of the job is bu

International Trade committee  Folks like EDC, BDC, and even the trade commissioner service have some very specific mandates that have a some touchpoints with what our mandate is and will be. The last thing that we want to do—and I hope that I will be able to come back to see you again in a year or several mon