International Trade committee  I know what you are referring to. Budget 2023 announced a commitment by the government to introduce legislation in 2024 to eradicate forced labour from supply chains. I think that's what you're referring to. Employment and Social Development Canada is the lead on labour issues.

International Trade committee  Thanks for the question, Madam Chair. It gives me an opportunity to speak about responsible business conduct. I think that is the key element here. We're talking about the expectations we have of the Canadian companies when they're operating abroad. We expect Canadian companies t

International Trade committee  Madam Chair, I'm happy to talk about how we handle allegations of misconduct. When an allegation of misconduct is presented to us, when we hear about this, there are a number of different ways in which we can treat that. We start by reinforcing our expectations of the client, o

International Trade committee  Yes, I'm happy to speak about that, Madam Chair. In that mission, we had a pretty significant delegation of businesses. We engaged in a lot of outreach, as well, prior to that. The team on the ground tried to set it up as best they could for the inbound businesses. Then we arran

International Trade committee  I'm happy to, Madam Chair. What we saw at the beginning—it's the reason why we entered into promoting the use of free trade agreements—is that we spent all that time negotiating free trade agreements, but there was a somewhat lower rate of utilization than we like seeing. People

International Trade committee  Thank you again for the question. Unfortunately, again, I'm going to have to defer to my colleagues at Transport Canada, because they manage the national trade corridors fund. I don't have any visibility into that or the requests that have been made. I apologize.

International Trade committee  I can start, Madam Chair. In terms of the top sectors that we see by number of services offered by the trade commissioner service, there's ICT with 17% of the 52,000 services that we offered last year. Agri-food is second, then education, clean technologies, and life sciences, a

International Trade committee  The trade commissioner service helps exporters reach foreign markets to sell products and services. We aim to provide clients with practical advice and intelligence on foreign markets to help them make better business decisions. The trade commissioner clients are Canadian compani

International Trade committee  We can hear the two interpreters, who are speaking at the same time. A man and a woman are speaking in English at the same time. We can hear the two interpreters speaking at the same time, but I still understood what you said.

International Trade committee  Okay.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much for the question. I did understand. I am not hearing from our clients about this, so I can't speak to—

International Trade committee  Very briefly, I would just say that it's probably a question better suited for Transport Canada officials, who I believe are on the second panel.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to address—

International Trade committee  Thank you again, Madam Chair. As noted, I'm Sara Wilshaw. I'm the assistant deputy minister of international business development, investment and innovation at Global Affairs Canada. I'm also the chief trade commissioner. This means that I lead a network of almost one thousand e

International Trade committee  I'm happy to. Thank you. In strengthening the responsible business conduct strategy that was reviewed and renewed in 2022—this is, I think, the third or fourth iteration of that strategy—we were looking for ways in which we could have a closer look at what the companies that we'