International Trade committee  No, this is a new program and it is a direct financial support to Canadian companies to do business abroad.

International Trade committee  It's direct cash. It's a contribution, so there are some obligations in terms of monitoring and reporting, but it's not refundable.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the invitation. We're very pleased to be here in spite of the snow. My name is Susan Bincoletto. I am the assistant deputy minister at Global Affairs Canada, responsible for business development. The responsibility I hold is chief trade commissioner, which means that I am responsible for all the trade commissioners around the world that serve Canadian companies to do business abroad and to attract investment into Canada, so it's more the trade and investment promotion side of it.

International Trade committee  Absolutely.

International Trade committee  We have regional offices in every region of the country. Their basic responsibility is to make sure they understand the circumstances of the region they serve and know which sectors are the most promising for international opportunities. Based on their business intelligence gathering, they provide the names of those companies to our missions, our embassies, and our consulate generals abroad where their sister trade commissioners are.

International Trade committee  In terms of the Trade Commissioner Service, we are realizing that there is a need for deeper and greater knowledge of what that all means. We are no longer selling a product. We are selling a sub-component of a product that can be used for a plane, an engine or many other applications.

International Trade committee  For trade commissioners, it is very important—I am talking about my service here—to be familiar with the new technologies and new developments and to always be on the lookout for them. They go to conferences to talk to business people and need to know the jargon of the business world; otherwise, they are not useful enough.

International Trade committee  Yes. It's clear that for some programs we do look at the sales revenue, and the normal breakdown is $50 million. Some say that if you have $10 million in sales you're a small company, and if you have up to $50 million you're a medium-sized company. The EDC uses the $50-million cutoff point, which Todd will say is almost the equivalent to less than 500 employees.

International Trade committee  I think we’ve identified 11,000 currently exporting, but it’s not an exact science. We don’t look, as a denominator, at all those companies that have the potential to export, and then get the percentage that actually export from that base number. They use the total number of SMEs overall.

International Trade committee  The challenges are the uncertainties of foreign markets. They don't know what they're getting into. They may say that they're doing five million dollars' worth of sales in Canada so they're happy to stay in that niche. It takes backbone. It takes entrepreneurship. It takes ambition to actually say, let's try to find other niches.

International Trade committee  Yes, we do that. We're more of a leading indicator in a sense because a lot of people come to us to figure out how to do things. Once we've exhausted our conversation with them, I think that's when they become more ready to hit EDC. Then their business plan is a lot more advanced and matured, and they may actually have a proposal to bring to EDC, whether it's for insurance, or bonding, or anything that EDC feels they can help with.

International Trade committee  Yes, we are developing a strategy with our partners in the department and with others to make sure there is an awareness on both sides. On the Canadian company side, it's what the wins through CETA mean for them. There will be webinars, face-to-face discussions with SMEs to say, okay, now this is what you can translate into a greater opportunity for you within some member states, not Europe as a whole but in some member states, depending on what they offer.

International Trade committee  We are connected. In the last year we've made a lot of progress in trying to increase that connection. We have cross-referral services. We have information centres that have been trained so that if an SME calls and says, well, I need x, y, and z, and it doesn't fit within the trade commissioner service offering, but we know that it might be EDC- or BDC-relevant, then we refer those SMEs.

International Trade committee  There are lots of examples. I can't really think of one company. When we provide a service in the trade commissioner service and we close a service—a service can be that we've established a contact, we've solved a shipping problem, or we've enabled a sale to occur—there's a survey that goes out to our clients.

International Trade committee  Generally, we look at the potential of growth for countries. Obviously, for example, the Asia-Pacific area is one of the areas where there is the most growth. Africa is one as well, where, if you look at the potential in the future, the growth can be very promising. Africa is not for everyone, and we can't simply say you should go to Asia.