International Trade committee  I think there is absolutely no doubt that you can do business ethically in Russia—obviously we strongly recommend it to all our members—and that you can do good business ethically in Russia. You need to choose your partners and ensure that you are doing that. I wouldn't say that

International Trade committee  When I responded to your earlier question, I said that I felt petty corruption had reduced significantly in Russia. I cited the example of customs, where I think there's been a lot of cleaning up. I think that where you get a concentration of political and economic power in any

International Trade committee  A lot has been done since the financial crisis of 1998, but there's still a lot more to do. Russia has a large number of “pocket banks”. There's a need for consolidation in the sector. There is a need, frankly, for better leadership from the Central Bank. That leadership has not

International Trade committee  It's clearly a source of solid ties. There's a very strong perception in Russia that Canada and Russia are the countries of the High North and that there's a heritage, a cultural and social environment that binds us because of our geographical position. There are also a lot of a

International Trade committee  It's very specific in Russia. It's not a comprehensive protectionist attitude. It's applicable to certain industries that the Russians absolutely want to protect. For example, the Russians had an excellent aeronautics industry 50 years ago. In the past 20 years, that industry ha

International Trade committee  That diaspora has, I would say, two very distinct components. One component is the people who have left Russia behind them, and that's quite a large component. A lot of people have left not really purely as economic refugees, but very much as people who had suffered under the old

International Trade committee  I think there has been a clear improvement in what I would describe as petty corruption, and a clear improvement in, for example, the ability to get goods through customs without having to pay bribes. Studies were done in 2001 and then again in 2003, of samples of Russian SMEs. I

International Trade committee  As Russian businesses come to western public markets and list, for example, on the London Stock Exchange, they go through a fairly intense process of tidying up before getting there. All of that and the governance that goes with it is all helping to shed the corruption that was u

International Trade committee  One of the things that accompanies consumer goods is packaging. Canada has notable companies involved in that sector and they're active in Russia. One of the investments I was talking about in the St. Petersburg region is driven by the need for packaging for consumer goods. Ano

International Trade committee  It's not good. The corpus of law is generally good and workable. The corpus of law, legislation itself, is actually good. The country has been putting in place good legislation. It has tidied up the crazy period of 1995 to 1996, when decrees were being issued that had force of la

International Trade committee  In the last two years, I think we have seen the deliberate management of pipelines for political ends. More recently it's been threatened, and there have been conveniently timed pipeline breakdowns. I have to leave it to you to draw the direct line between those dots.

International Trade committee  There was a major debate in Russia concerning the Kyoto Protocol, and Andrei Illarionov, who was the president's economic éminence grise, left two years ago after failing in his attempt to have Russia join the Kyoto accords. That was a major disappointment for all of us because h

International Trade committee  I endorse what Luc is saying. CERBA and EDC work very closely together. I would have thought, given that EDC has just opened its permanent presence in Moscow, that it's perhaps a little early for them to be considering opening one in St. Petersburg alongside us. But we at CERBA

International Trade committee  Very simply, Russia has 11 time zones, from east to west. It is a huge country. The Moscow embassy does not have the resources to cover the whole of the country, from Vladivostok, which is physically much closer to Vancouver than to Moscow, and across to St. Petersburg. Those res

International Trade committee  A rivalry between the cities?