Good morning to everyone joining us from BC and good afternoon to our speakers connecting from London. Welcome to our today's webinar on trading with the UK, what now post-Brexit. To begin with, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking today from the territories of the Gwongan-speaking people, the Esquimald and Sangeese First Nations. And I'm thankful you are able to attend today from the territories and communities in which you live, work and play. The topic of today's webinar, trading with the UK, what now post-Brexit, has been on the top of mind for many businesses around the world lately. We decided to provide you businesses operating in British Columbia with the latest insights into the current and forthcoming trade framework, financial solutions and business opportunities in the UK from Canadian NBC perspective. My name is Ganna Drost, I'm Manager in the Trade Policy and Negotiations Branch, BC Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation. I'm joined today by my colleague Benjamin Kaliznik in the same branch who will be helping us with the Q&A sessions later and our distinguished guests, Nicole Davison, British Council General to Vancouver, Rupert Porter, former British Council General to Vancouver and now Managing Director, Europe Trade and Investment Representative Office, Melissa Arsenault, Operations Manager in Rupert's team and Christopher Thiparaj, Senior Account Manager in BC Vancouver Island Region with Export Development Canada. So before we get started, I'd like to go over the agenda and a few housekeeping items so that you know what to expect and how to participate in today's interactive session. So the webinar will last approximately one hour and 30 minutes. There will be three presentations in total. We will start with the opening remarks by Council General Nicole Davison and we'll move to a quick intro to Canada-UK Trade Continuity Agreement and then we'll move to doing business in the UK. Recent trends and how BC Trade and Investment Representative Office can help you find in partners and increase your presence in the UK. These presentations will be delivered by Rupert and I and will last approximately 40 to 50 minutes in total. We will then move to Chris's presentation on Trade Financing, Expert Credit Insurance and Risk Management Solutions by Canada, Expert Credit Agency, Expert Development Canada, known as EDC. We will have a live Q&A session starting towards 5 past 10. You will have an opportunity to submit text questions to presenters by typing your questions into the questions pane on the control panel at any time during the webinar. If you run out of time at the Q&A session, we will follow up with you individually and you may also wish to explore the handout section of the go-to webinar and you'll find there the today's presentation deck and information on Canada's International Free Trade Agreement application in different sectors. And lastly, we are recording the webinar and you will receive it in follow-up email along with today's presentation. So without further ado, I now pass the floor to Nicole Davison, British Council General to Vancouver for the opening remarks. So Nicole, the floor is yours. Great, thank you very much, Ghana, and it's great to be able to join you and others today on this session to talk about BC's Trade and Investment relationship with the UK now that we've left the EU. I just wanted to take three or four minutes to kind of set it into a little bit of context. We also work on trade and investment between British Columbia and the United Kingdom. What we do here at the Consulate is we help Canadian companies who want to set up in the UK and work with British companies who want to trade into Canada. But when dealing with Canadian companies who specifically like to explore a trade relationship with the United Kingdom, we work very closely with my colleagues who are on the line today so that we have a very holistic relationship and make sure that nobody falls between two chairs. So as an overarching point, I'd like to say that from our perspective, the UK is obviously still a very strong trade and investment partner, and there are many factors that support that. We still rank in one of the top five countries in terms of global innovation. We have one of the strongest economies in the world, although like many others, we are taking a post-pandemic hit. But we do have a fairly optimistic outlook on what post-pandemic recovery will look like. We have a substantial talent pool. We have a very strong legal system, competitive labour costs, and a very vibrant tech ecosystem. So we still are in a very, very good place to attract trade opportunities and investment opportunities into the UK. We have a trade continuity agreement in place with Canada, which was agreed post-EU departure. And consultations are now underway on taking that to a more enhanced free trade agreement between Canada and the UK, and formal negotiations on that will likely start around September. And what we hope, and it's very much the will of both sides, is that we will see a substantial reduction in tariffs and duties. And in addition to tariff reductions, there are also going to be a lot of other elements which is going to make this a very advanced free trade agreement, which will look at things like the green economy, women's economic empowerment, indigenous rights, amongst other areas. From the UK perspective, we've also announced our intention to exceed to CPTP, and that's received support from all member countries. And the UK's participation in this multinational trade agreement, which is very much focused on Asia and the Pacific, would also expand the impact of any agreements that we have and significantly increase the trade blocs annual GDP. And of course, the British Columbia and its position in the Pacific Rim is very appropriate in that conversation. And one of the last things I wanted to mention, that's a big, big priority for us this year, is our hosting of COP26, zero emission vehicles, green finance, nature-based solutions, adaptation and resilience. And we are looking at all of those in a political context, but also in a business context and working with businesses, including Canadian businesses, to significantly increase the level of ambition around climate change and emissions targets. And we see business as being key to that delivery, partly because of the economic power that businesses have with government, but also because it's something that investors expect, customers expect. So one of the key things that we'll be working on here is around raising Canadian ambition on that and getting more and more Canadian businesses to sign up to pledges like race to zero. So I'm delighted to be able to join you today. I very much look forward to seeing how this conversation unfolds. I know the focus is significantly on trade into the UK. So I'll hand over to my colleagues who have a lot more to say about UNA afterwards. So thank you very much. Thank you so much for your time of presentation. And we also turn to Canada-UK Trade Continuity Agreement, Trade Policy and Negotiations Branch. I work in, represents BC interests in free trade agreements negotiations and trade disputes that affect BC. And we also work to increase businesses' awareness and of the opportunities in free trade agreements and assist you dealing with the trade issues you might be facing. So in my today's presentation, I'll briefly mention the role of our ministry and Canada's free trade agreements before moving to the Canada-UK trade framework and trade continuity agreement. Then I'll mention some opportunities it offers for BC companies like you, as well as the UK-UK trade cooperation agreement. And I'll try to keep it fairly high level so it's not too technical for you. So let's start with this slide about our ministry of jobs, economic recovery and innovation. Some of you might have already seen it in our previous webinars on Canada's free trade agreements. It essentially explains why we do what we do. The Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation aims to make life more affordable for British Columbians by building a strong and sustainable economy and improve the standard of living. Here we normally show a welcoming video of our Minister of State for Trade, George Chow, and he fully endorses and supports infosessions on Canada's free trade agreements. We assist you, BC businesses, to be aware and to leverage export opportunities and market access opportunities, found in Canada's free trade agreements, of course. And we do this through a variety of programs like Expert Navigator that provides free support and ongoing guidance to help you, your business grow outside of BC. And I know there are several Expert Navigators online today and we also have BC in-market representatives like Rupert Porter and his team in Europe, but we do also have them in a number of markets globally. We want you to succeed in your export journey and diversify your export markets and that's why we focus on providing you support and having your back when you do business outside of the province domestically and internationally. So Canada is a trading nation and we now have 15 free trade agreements that cover 49 countries. Those agreements give you access to about 1.5 billion potential consumers worldwide and this map shows you where in the world Canada currently has those free trade agreements. They are marked in blue. Some of the well known are KUSMA, Canada's Agreement with the US and Mexico, CPTPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership that is currently enforced between Canada, Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Mexico. And the one that Nicole has just mentioned that the UK has already expressed an interest and sent the official request to join too. And of course the CETA, the Canada's Comprehensive Economic Agreement with the European Union. The UK was initially part of the CETA and this agreement stopped applying to the UK when it left the European Union on December 31, 2020 and I'll go into it into more details shortly. So why doing business in the UK? The UK is the second largest market for BC in Europe. The UK is also our eighth largest market globally. It is a really important and historic trading partner for both BC and Canada. We speak the same language and our political and legal systems are similar and there is a long-standing trade relation between BC and the UK and there is a comfort feeling of coming and doing business in that market and even despite the last year pandemic, BC's experts to the UK actually showed a slight growth. So what is the Canada-UK trade framework right now? So up to date the CETA applied to the UK for a bit more than three years and CETA is still a very important agreement for Canada and BC and it continues to apply to 28 EU member states and provides stability in trade. As Brexit was looming on the horizon, Canada's and UK's prime ministers discussed a need for consistency and seamless transition for Canada-UK business and then there were some delays in negotiation of what is now called Canada-UK trade continuity agreement and Canada and the UK signed this agreement on December 9, 2020 and there was not enough time to put it through Canadian ratification process. So to ensure that there is no disruption between Canada and UK trade, there was an interim measure known as the memorandum of understanding. So this memorandum of understanding was put in place and applied from January 1, 2021 to April 1, 2021 and it covered only market access for goods. So from April 1 this year, the Canada-UK trade continuity agreement, TCA, entered into force and it is highlighted here on this slide in yellow. So this trade continuity agreement is not a brand new trade agreement and it essentially rolls over CETA benefits and its role is to maintain the CETA benefits while Canada and the UK negotiate a new proper trade agreement. So when the UK was still part of the European Union, it could not negotiate its own free trade agreement and now since they left the EU, Canada is keen to negotiate a proper agreement that focuses on strengths of both countries. For example, digital trade, trade and services to make sure that this agreement becomes of a mutual benefit. You might have heard that the UK has also submitted a formal request to join the CPTPP to which Canada is also a party to and the Government of Canada is actually currently running a public consultation on future trade relations with the UK for both bilateral and multilateral levels and I encourage you to check out this link on this slide. It's also available in your handout and provide your feedback to the public consultation that was launched by the federal government. This consultation is open until April 27th and if you wish, you can also submit your feedback directly to my email after the session and we'll make sure it is received as part of the BBC response to the federal government. So following this consultation, Canada and the UK will start negotiating future trade relations. Both have committed to begin negotiations for a permanent bilateral free trade agreement within the first year of its entry into force, of the TCA entry into force and while the TCA does not expire, there are some key market access elements that will expire after three years and will create a strong incentive for both parties to discuss the permanent deal. So now let's move into what TCA covers and its implications for you. So the TCA maintains 98 tariff elimination, 98 percent tariff elimination on BC and Canadian products that are exported to the UK and this is the same as under the CTA, so this, the tariff reduction and tariff elimination doesn't change. So with this purpose, there was a UK tariff that was introduced by CBSA and you can check it following this link as well. So the rules of origin provisions are also the same but you will need to fill in an origin declaration as opposed to the CTA certificate of origin and there is also a link that will show you how to do that. So if you're importing from the UK you can still use the European Union materials and processing in your imports to Canada and there are certain conditions to that cumulation and provisions will expire in 2024 unless, unless revised and extended. So the Senator and Secretary commitments of the CTA are also maintained in the UK TCA. The TCA fully protects Canada's dairy, poultry and ag sectors and provides no new incremental market access for cheese or any other supply managed products. Some agricultural and fish and seafood goods are subject to tariff quota, to tariff rate quotas under the CTA were also carried over with the new volumes and I'll come back to that in a few moments. So under the CTA beef, pork and wheat, TRQs are administered under a licensing system and the UK was not able to replicate that system. So instead these products will be administered on a first cum first served basis under the TCA. So provisions for trade and services procurement remain unchanged from the CTA and the investment dispute resolution provisions are suspended pending a review by both Canada and the UK and this is because the provisions were not part of the provisional CTA application. So they say that Brexit is not a moment and it is a process and since January there has been some delays and frictions at the customs borders, some duplication of information and forms and companies report that three days at the customs border before turning to five days now. I'm sure that Rupert will be able to provide more insights on that and of course there are some other trade related Brexit implications that are not part of the TCA itself but are worth considering. So there were changes to customs forms from the CTA and Canadian and BC exporters and even online marketplaces need to register to submit the UK VAT now. If you export animals or animal products to the UK you'd want to note that export health certificates for animals and animal products were extended until June 30th this year. After that you'd need to fill in the certificate on the Great Britain form, GB form, unless you export your products to the Northern Ireland that maintains the EU export health certificates and Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFAA will advise you on the on the specific form. The UK is now a third country for the European Union and that's very important to keep in mind because some commodities require transit and re-export certificates if they are transiting through the UK before arriving in the EU countries or if they are being imported into the UK first before being re-exported to the EU. This works the opposite way from the EU to the UK as well and we've heard of some consignments of seafood destined to Austria being caught for three months in the UK so that might be the case where a transit certificate was was required. So some of you have been asking about past analysis and phytosanitary certificates and systems approach for fruit experts. It is still to be seen what what approach the UK will adopt and will advise you on what we hear from from the CFAA. Sorry. So meanwhile some time ago the UK has also introduced a peach system for plants and fresh produce inputs and you might wish to explore it following the the embedded link here on this slide. There is also a change from the CE product marking to the UK CA version and if you need to put that CE mark for your product when shipping it to the European Union this means that now if you ship it to the UK market you'll need to comply with the UK legislation and put the the new mark. If you ship to both markets to the UK and the European Union you'll need to comply with both legislations and you need to have the both marks on your product. So UK CA marking came into effect on January 1st this year however to allow businesses time to adjust and to adopt to the new requirements you will still be able to use the CE marking for the UK market until January 1st 2022 in most cases and on the on the positive side the UK Canada organic equivalence agreement came into effect on January 1st 2021 and the the arrangement allows organic products certified under the Canada organic regime to be sold and labeled as organic in the UK and and vice versa. So these are just some of the implications to consider but this is by no means is an exhaustive list and if you have been doing business in the EU and thinking about doing business in the UK just consider acquiring a legal advice or engage a customs broker freight forwarder or logistics provider or reach out to to Rupert and his team or or to us and we'll do our best to to help you. So on this slide I'll talk about the origin quotas and origin quotas are something that is often overlooked by many and that's why I wanted to highlight it today. I assume that you know about the rules of origin so this is the share of domestic or Canadian content that needs to be present in your product in order for it to qualify for preferential tariff treatment in markets where Canada has free trade agreements. You attest to it in your certificate or declaration of origin and it is specific to each product and to each free trade agreement but you might ask what to do if my product does not qualify under rules of origin and here are some categories of products that even when not qualifying as originating can still enjoy zero tariff up to a certain volume per year when shipped from Canada to the European Union and now to to the UK. So these are called origin quotas and they are renewed on annual basis and they will actually help you save some costs. The good thing for you here is that with the UK that have left the European Union this quota under the CETA under the agreement between Canada and the European Union the quota was not reduced and the TCA quota was added on top and highlighted in yellow here on this slide is the existing quota that busy companies have been using quite successfully when trading with the European Union and in green the quota that's been added in Canada UK TCA. So as you can see there is a wealth of opportunities that can be explored within these categories that are already in use or in some underutilized categories such as sugar confectionary dog and cat food textiles and and seafood. So just just a couple of words here on the UK EU trade and cooperation agreement and its importance for Canada's NBC trade. So Brexit has resulted in changes to the UK EU trade in relationship and how goods cross the UK EU water and this is because UK is no longer part of the EU single market, customs union and free trade area. You and UK are rewriting everything in their trade and in fact this UK trade and cooperation agreement is the first trade agreement that constricts trade as opposed to liberalizing it. So from January 1st 2021 UK EU has been determined the trade between both countries has been determined by each party's international commitments as well as this UK EU trade and cooperation agreement. So goods traded between the UK and the EU countries have no tariffs or quotas attached but otherwise they are subject to the requirements that are normally imposed on goods from third countries along with checks prior to importation and this is very important to keep in mind as it is relevant to customs, VAT regime, SPS measures, among others and most of frictions for moving goods were observed from the UK to the EU until now and this is because the EU applied new requirements from January 1st this year and the UK is basing out those requirements for the shipments from the EU and it means that the EU shippers will encounter similar issues from spring or summer this year. So the Northern Ireland protocol was part of the UK EU agreement, Brexit agreement and it is put in place to protect peace on the island. The protocol affects you if you move goods in and out of Northern Ireland and it is meant to keep actually the land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland open. That is why the border checks for goods are now happening in the Northern Ireland ports. So if the goods enter the Northern Ireland from the outside of the UK and the European Union in a very broad terms one pace UK VAT if goods are not at risk of onward movement to the European Union and one would be subject to the EU VAT if goods will enter the European Union. But for services of course it's more it's more complex than that and I'm sure that Rupert will also vouch that this is a very complicated matter. So I'm going to stop here and just reiterate that Brexit is still very much a process and there are many phasings expiring deadlines and possibilities for extensions and revisions that are associated with the trade agreements. So if you are planning or already exporting to the UK moving your goods from the UK to the European Union and vice versa we advise you to seek the advice or reach out to us and we can assist you or introduce you to people who can help you. So before I wrap up a few words about how to easily look up tariffs for your product. So some of you might have already seen this slide. This is a screenshot from Canada's tariff finder website and is a handy tool for figuring out what sort of tariffs your products will face in the market or what tariffs you would pay when bringing a good into Canada. So it's a fairly user friendly tool and it is specifically designed for the markets with which Canada has free trade agreements. All you need to begin is the market you're interested in and the product you want to export or to import and you can find your product either by HS code or by a keyword so I encourage you to check this tool. And of course last but not least here is a website where you can let the trade commissioner service know about a trade barrier that you are facing. Trade bearers take two forms they can be tariff and non-tariff and trade bearers they non-tariff ones they include administrative procedures, quantitative restrictions such as quotas for example, price controls, licensing requirements and products labeling requirements for example and it's important to remember that not all regulations and procedures are considered a trade barrier and some regulations really make sense while others are probably a real barrier to your trade. So when you face a legitimate barrier through this website you can easily report them. You may think that others are probably experiencing the same barrier and have already erased it and there is no sense in reporting it again but that's not necessarily true and even if the barrier has been erased already it's helpful for the federal government to get additional details and to know how many businesses are affected by this. So I know it's been quite a few of technical slides here and a lot of information in this short period of time and I hope it was not too too technical. So if you take just one thing away from this presentation I hope that if you have any questions about Canada-UK trade agreement or any other Canada's free trade agreements or how to use them get in touch with us. And now I pass it over to Rupert, managing director for Europe Trade and Investment Representative Office who is joining us from London today for his update. So Rupert, over to you. Super, thanks very much Kenna and it's great to be joining you all. Thanks very much for listening in and I hope that I can talk you through a little bit about what we do, what we're here for and how we can help. A little bit on the trade arc that is coming into the UK and Europe although Kenna has covered a fantastic amount of detail and information about the UK economy and the sort of trends that we're seeing which we think present opportunities as well as I may sort of cover a little bit on the European Union side as well in that and then finally really the sectors where we are focused where we put most of our effort and understanding and where we can help but as I'll cover that that's not a sort of limited list in terms of reactive. So if there are questions that fall outside that we're happy to look at them or consider them and support businesses that are not in those specific areas but I'll come to that. So if I could have the next slide please. Thanks very much. So this is who we are, your team in Europe. We are based primarily in the UK but as you can see we have a colleague in the Netherlands and another colleague in Germany. We do operate across the whole of the European market though and operate on a sector basis rather than a geographical basis. So wherever we're based we lead by the sector and go to the specific part of Europe as needed to support the businesses. So that's the way we approach it. That said having someone specifically in the Netherlands, specifically in Germany and then the majority of our team in the UK speaks to where we see most attraction and most of the trade and investment and so it also gives us a little bit more of an on the ground understanding of those markets which is why we are positioned the way we are. As you can see from the team as well as I say I'll come into more detail on the sectors that we cover but that gives you a little bit of a snapshot of those sectors up front before we come to any more detail later. All of the team support both investment into BC from Europe, attracting, encouraging and helping companies looking to establish or invest in BC but more importantly for this conversation we support BC businesses looking to export access and succeed in the UK and the EU markets. As Nicole said at the outset quite rightly we try and work as a holistic team so we work very closely with the UK consulate and with some of the other European consulates in BC who are obviously looking to support their exporters into BC or looking to attract investment aware that often one leads to the other and is part of a whole process. So in some ways it's an artificial line that's that's it's the best way that we think that we can provide support and assistance that benefits the economies that we're representing. The other partners that we work very closely with particularly on the trade side are the Canadian Trade Commissioners as you can see from the scale of our team as opposed to the scale of the European and the UK markets we are small we try to cover a lot as well as we can but understanding on the ground particularly in some of the European countries for example which we may not know as well we work very closely with the trade commissioner service too so you may if you contact us directly for anything after this or have done so already may find that we work in partnership with them too in terms of doing what we can to support you. So that's the team you can get in contact with any of us directly depending on your sectors but if in doubt come through me or in fact one of my colleagues is on the line Melissa who as you can see basically keeps us all running as well as leading and supporting on the agri-food sector so do come to either of us and if it's not asked we can certainly point in the right direction. Thanks so next slide please. Ghana covered a lot of this so I'll only be very brief but certainly this is the way we also view the trading architecture that hopefully mostly helps BC companies into the UK and Europe. CETA was covered as was the trade continuity agreement and even touched on as well the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement which whilst not obviously directly signed or involved in Canada affects Canadian companies looking to trade with those markets where they're looking to trade with both. I won't go into details on this slide in particular as I say because I think Ghana covered it very very well in her presentation just now so I will go to the next slide which covers a little bit more on the impact if we can thank you. So in very broad terms what this means for BC what that architecture means for BC is those exporting to EU countries only as I think came through there's a lot of continuity things are basically the same and you're operating under CETA. Those exporting to the UK only now do so under the TCA forgive me that that's not under the MOU I'm going to look both prepared and unprepared all at the same time when I say I put this just before the TCA came actually into force at the beginning of this month so ignore that sentence it is now under the TCA and then longer term potentially a full spoke long term agreement which has also been covered. So exporting to the UK only in a way that is technically still as straightforward as it was but it's now under the TCA and I say that because the measures have been carried over from CETA into the TCA for the most part but within that you obviously now have to do the UK equivalence where things become a bit more complicated are in the next two so if you're exporting to both the EU and the UK or transferring goods between them then you find that the three agreements that have been mentioned all potentially have an impact so the regulatory requirements by and large are the same for both at the moment in terms of the technical specifications and what's required but the paperwork gifers that and customs and particularly if you're transiting then you have to sort of consider both forms of paperwork potentially and making sure that the good goods don't get held up in one or the other an example has already been mentioned of that longer term the other issue to think about is at the moment while there is regulatory alignment one of the things that can potentially happen post brexit of course is that the UK and EU can diverge on their regulations and requirements whether that's driven by either EU or UK domestic demands and the desire to evolve on a regulatory basis that can start affecting more sectors and more categories of goods that come into both markets. The last one I've included here establishing or managing an operational presence in the EU or UK really if you're looking to manage investment into manage business within Europe or within the UK by establishing a presence you now need to consider your primary market primary objectives it's certainly still doable from one into the other but you'd obviously need to consider travel movement of your goods services and whether you're trying to tap into one market or the other or both and what that means for your investment footprint as you go. I put in the caveat these are general principles that apply to all businesses it very very quickly in as you will know goes from the general principles that you have to consider to its very niche specifics that apply to your business so that is again where we can come in and try and talk you through those so there is now quite a bit of complexity to navigate but on the positive side the agreements that have been put into place most recently the TCA provide a lot more continuity than would have been otherwise the case so we're in not a bad position. Thank you very much. Next slide so looking at the UK market and where there's potential how it's looking at the moment obviously have to start by looking at the COVID impact 2020 was very difficult year as you'll have seen from the news for the UK and Europe and many other parts of the world there are some figures there and notes just about the measures that we're taking that have been taken on the positive side the number of cases the R rate have been diminishing in the UK the UK is also going through rolling out particular steps to ease the lockdown restrictions that were in place we've just been through the second step on April the 12th and there's another step coming in mid May and another after that in the June all predicated on the numbers of cases and the R rate being where the government and medical health advice wants them to be but so far so good there is definitely a sense that the UK is coming out of this without getting complacent obviously because vigilance is going to have to be the word through this year part of that is a result of a very strong vaccine rollout more than 32 million which is going very very well so I think that's helping reassure too and the last bullet point just under COVID on the aim I should make clear that that's very much my own probably I hope better more than a best guess but projection about how things will evolve and what I mean by that is through spring and into summer we are still running pretty much everything we do virtually there's still very little travel even to a degree within the UK but certainly internationally what we hope to see is that come the fall that travel and openness starts to be able to return and that we can start working with clients a little bit more in person than we have done over the last year or more economic conditions as with the UK as with much of the world last year was a very difficult year strong big GDP downturn specific sectors mentioned their travel hospitality you could also add entertainment sports arts and so on all very badly hit some sectors though adapting and particularly adapting as the year went on into this year I think the ability to handle the changes businesses have responded remarkably well in their ability to get better and better at adapting to the new world and consumers have adapted to obviously which is then effective business so a lot more online groceries doing well whereas obviously restaurants have found it very difficult ICT I could include medical technology and so on lots of business going on there projecting forwards through this year and onwards there are legacy challenges to be dealt with again as with the UK as with elsewhere in the world the decrease in investment last year decrease in consumption there is certainly a way to go governments including the UK so built up a lot of debt completely understandably in terms of shoring up the economy and making sure people keep jobs and businesses survive for when the return happens what we're also seeing though is that into this year that actually there are some very good economic indicators growth through this year so the stock market I've put in their commodity prices property values and activity being a key one all looking very promising through 2021 into 2022 which is good so I'll move to the next slide thank you again my own view on where some of the big opportunities are as a result of some of the big strategic trends that we're seeing within the UK and these actually apply to Europe more broadly as well for all that we can and need to talk about brexit and trade agreements actually there's a lot of sort of commonality in terms of prioritization and what is happening in the markets you won't probably be surprised to see those three as I say they're my own take on where I think some of the big opportunities are climate change and environmental management is becoming a part of all business now in terms of I guess the core of it around energy generation energy efficiency transportation and move and moves to greener transport green energy these areas are where a lot of the potential lies the UK is very forward on climate change both because it has been for a while but also as Nicole mentioned because COP26 is at the end of this year and has some robust action to take it is to meet some very ambitious targets that provides business opportunity though and I've highlighted a few areas there digitization the same a lot of move in familiar sectors to you that equally apply to the UK and to elsewhere in Europe so the adoption of digital technologies in a lot of other sectors these are very cross-cutting both digitization and climate and environment and then health which is obviously more of a specific area itself but I've mentioned the various drivers there so aging demographic having to respond to the pandemic and prepare potentially for new ones has forced adaptation and evolution in that in some ways in quite a remarkable way in this sector I believe that's set to continue so businesses in those sectors particularly that are innovative I think there's opportunity there there's quite a lot that I could add in there that has not been included so agricultural technology forestry I've mentioned touched on biofuels but the broader bio economy timber and so on there are other areas too but I think these are some of the big trends that I'd highlight so and we can get into those more if you wish to in the Q&A so next slide thanks very much so I will run through these very very quickly but as I say I'm happy to sort of come back to any of the specific areas so these are the areas as I mentioned at the start where we see a lot of traction they vary in terms of the amount of emphasis that is placed on trade from BC into the European market and the amount of time we spend working on investment and investment attraction into BC from the UK and from Europe but all of them to some degree involve both so agri-food for example is not exclusively but very heavily an export approach that we take whereas agri-tech is very much about innovation developments looking for innovative partners that we can bring to BC again not exclusively because there's some very interesting innovation going on in BC which has potential market traction in the UK and in Europe too and I've mentioned forest and the bio economy as well as I say happy to come back to these next slide please mining and energy the sort of large resource bases out of BC also very much important for the UK and for the European market for mining we do tend to be reactive but we've certainly been engaged in some areas of that particularly around capital investment into BC London obviously still being and continuing to be an incredibly strong financial services sector financial services provider into the mining sector and other sectors so we do continue there energy as well obviously for BC LNG development but more broadly too and combining with clean growth potential opportunities and hydrogen is one area that I'd highlight there too but also some interesting technology coming out of BC on CCUS so work there too and clean growth I mentioned it driving the UK context but obviously also in BC with clean BC so I think there's their real potential synergies there for us to work on next slide I realise I'm whipping through these but I want to allow us time for a bit of questioning at the end and these are the sort of the final sectors life sciences have helped I've touched on centrally important and certainly been a busy year and is looking set to continue to be ICT digital interactive media BCs a large part of that on the back of both BC strength in creative digital media but also some specific ICT areas the challenge there on an export basis of course being the UK and what are your very evolved markets so you have to have something innovative and cutting edge but certainly if you have then it's open to that and BC does have some good stories to tell in that so very keen and happy to work on those areas too same for advanced manufacturing that's a I'm aware that last one's a little bit of a catch all but they all matter and we work in different ways in all of them so aerospace for example the first one investment into BC particularly with BC strength in MRO and materials development and then thank you for the port third largest port in North America so working on marine and the development of marine industry particularly around ocean technology as well where there's some potential interesting synergies between BC as well with the UK and Europe so those are the sectors and just to close off next couple of slides are purely visual some BC companies which you will all recognise that are established and doing well in the UK obviously those are the names the headline sort of names beneath that there is an awful lot of export and trade going on those are really the ones that are sort of established with large presence in the UK and the next slide is the flip side of that lots of names you'll recognise that have UK HQs doing very good business in BC again that doesn't speak purely to exports from the UK into Canada or BC but some some big names that set up in BC all of whom we work with to a greater or lesser degree so I will stop there I hope that has covered some of the key areas and key dynamics that we're seeing but as I say happy to come back to that in the Q&A thanks very much thank you so much Rupert thanks for this excellent presentation we already see some questions coming but we'll save them for the Q&A session so now without further ado I pass it over to Chris DiParagia senior account manager for BC on Vancouver Island region export development Canada so Chris. Great thanks Laura it's yours. Great thanks so much Ghana and thank you good morning everyone thank you for having the opportunity giving me the opportunity to speak it's great to see the partnership between the various government partners coming together for the benefit of the Canadian NBC exporting company EDC sorry apologize in advance you cannot see my face so I'm having technical issues on my end but that's not necessarily a bad thing EDC is part of as Ghana mentioned the federal government we are the country's export credit agency and our mandate is really quite simple it's to help Canadian companies grow outside of Canada how we do so really falls into three main categories and there's a number of ways that we do provide help that kind of spin off from those three main core topics but for the purpose of this presentation we'll stick to those three main buckets so to speak and feel free to engage with me with questions as you see fit so if you move on to the next slide Ghana our core solutions fall into three main categories risk mitigation working capital solutions and market intelligence so we do have some core products they're going to help you financially either perform continue to perform or entertain new opportunities in in markets outside of Canada in the next slide the first solution we have is the ability to provide insurance for you now what this looks like is accounts receivable insurance this is the ability to protect you the Canadian exporter against non-payment from your forum buyer the high level benefits of the program really allows you to leverage accounts receivable insurance to gain access to more working capital from your financial institution it also allows you to offer more competitive terms to your customers and that's something that's becoming more and more relevant to today's global economy and thirdly it allows you to mitigate the risk of non-payment from your buyer and allow you to gain access to markets that you normally maybe would think about entertaining next slide please the credit insurance program uh really again mentions it protects your balance sheet so regardless of the size of your receivable or the market you're going into we have the ability to protect that protect you by doing an investigation on your forum buyer we have offices across the globe and those are the our boots in the ground and we do have an office based in London and so we connect with them and our internal resources and conduct investigations on those buyers in that specific market with that insurance it protects you up to 90% so in the event that you're a buyer in the UK or whatever market that you're going into does not pay you you're going to recover 90% of the cost of that receivable which is a pretty significant amount and depending on the size of the AR could have a pretty material impact on your business the insurance itself is fairly flexible in that it allows you to ensure maybe just the one-off sale that you have and it allows you to customize it from market to market or if you are a robust exporter already who has a quite a sense of reach into various markets or one particular market it will allow you to protect your entire portfolio point being is that it's a customizable product that allows you to pick and choose and really that's the benefit of having that because it allows you to determine the cost effectiveness based on your your business model what impacts the fee or the premium on your insurance is the credit worthiness of your buyer and the market that you're going into so the UK market is a market that we are quite comfortable with and so premiums can range I've seen as low as 0.2 percent however when you go into more challenging markets such as parts of South America or Africa the premiums may increase based on risk as we take a look at not only the the credit risk of a buyer but marketing market conditions as well such as human rights violations political risk corruption and things of that nature at the end of the day when you're utilizing EDC you can ensure that we are making sure that you are not going to have the reputational risk of your company jeopardizing anyway on to the next slide what mechanisms are covered well what covers what is covered under the accounts receivable insurance is if your account your buyer goes default claims bankruptcy if there's a risk of repudiation as mentioned political risk export and import restrictions so when borders close or ports close and contract cancellation what's not included is disputes so if you for example ship a package of rice and you say that that that rice is brown rice and they get it and it's it's white rice that's not a dispute that that's not an issue that would be covered to the insurance sales to related parties so if you have an affiliate in the UK and you are selling it to your affiliate first for that affiliate then on sales that would not be covered as well misrepresentation and corruption so corruption is in the event that you the Canadian exporter or the buyer themselves has been flagged for corruption risks or violations we cannot provide insurance on that as well at the end of the day we'll have a conversation with you based on your your buyer and the need that you have but if we cannot provide insurance in a particular situation it may be a reason to pause and reassess your relationship with that buyer or incorporate some more risk mitigation tools on your end next slide please bonding solutions is part of the second bucket I mentioned so the insurance is the risk mitigation piece the bonding solutions and the subsequent solution falls into our working capital solution now we are not a bank nor are we a lender we rely on the Canadian banks and credit unions to drive that relationship however we have the ability to enhance their capabilities and take a little bit of the risk off their shoulder especially since COVID happened the Canadian banking environment has tightened up a little bit and became a little bit more restrictive and so our mechanisms here are kind of make ways for us to flex our muscle a little bit and get the banks a little bit more comfortable and lending on the next slide talks about our bonding solution specifically and this may or may or may not be relevant in your industry but what this really does is in the event you as a Canadian exporting company are required to post some sort of financial instrument whether it be a standby letter of credit a letter of guarantee or some or some some kind of performance bond you typically will go to go to your bank for that instrument your bank will then recess the situation and require cash collateral to securitize that instrument so for example let's say your buyer in the UK says we would like a $250,000 of letter of credit as part of this relationship you go to your bank here in Victoria or wherever in DC and your bank says that's fine we will issue that letter of credit but we need cash so we'll ask you for cash deposit of $250,000 or if your company has an operating line of credit they'll carve that out of your operating line of credit that essentially has an implication on your working capital you may need that $250,000 to execute on your contract or to continue ramping up operations so we have a mechanism in our bonding solution where we instruct the bank to open up a separate facility that's independent of your operating line and that facility is meant solely for posting letters or credits letters of guarantee and bonds we backstop that facility 100% so we now eliminate the need for you the Canadian company to have any cash collateral in that equation the banks love that mechanism because we are guaranteeing it 100% so there's absolutely no risk to them nor do we share in any security or any type of asset that they have as part of your security package and it typically works very well with the Canadian companies because at the end of the day we're backstopping this facility but really it's just a handshake between us and you the Canadian exporting company so we tend to look at the opportunity that you have the market that you're going into and the specific ask but we have then the ability to encourage the bank to open this type of instrument or facility in a refruit specifically we've seen it happen where a lot of Canadian companies are using co-packers outside of the country as part of their operations co-packers often may or may or may or may not require something called a supplier bond and this supplier bond will open up better terms to you from your co-packer that's another instrument where we have the ability to provide 100% backstopping so if your co-packer says you know in order to get better payment terms or better terms we're going to have the request of a hundred thousand dollar letter of credit again EDC come in here and backstop that 100% the next slide goes into our financing options now I mentioned that we are not a bank nor are we a lender and we don't want to be seen as one but we have the ability to enhance the bank's capabilities of lending so in the next slide typically how this works is we have the ability to provide a partial guarantee on a lending facility that your lender is looking to do it's quite flexible and the solutions that we can provide vary typically we see this request coming to us for an operating line of credit however it can work for pre-shipment whip facilities work in progress facilities operating lines for an affiliate or subsidiary financing and especially relevant when there's inventory outside of Canada where the Canadian banks can't recognize on that security at the end of the day how that looks like is your bank will you will engage with your bank and say I'm XYZ company in BC I'm exporting my product to the UK and I need to access the more capital the Canadian banks will want to support you but they may have some hesitations given the fact that you're exporting and so they come to export development Canada and ask for a guarantee we typically guarantee 75% when it comes to working capital solutions and that helps the banks get a little bit more comfortable in lending money to their companies we do a lot of the due diligence in terms of assessing the market that you're going into again and looking at the opportunities that you have within that market but at the end of the day we provide that guarantee to the bank and the bank is feeling a lot more comfortable in lending out money in instances where there is foreign inventory or foreign acquisitions or financing foreign affiliates we can go up to 100% so completely eliminating the banks risk in those situations if we go on to the next slide this program is called our export guarantee program and it's a very common program for Canadian for the Canadian banks and credit you can see utilize it's important to notice that is a risk sharing mechanism so we're not taking all the risk under this particular program it's very flexible in terms of what type of lending facility you may want so it could be a capex facility maybe it's a short term shred facility maybe you're experiencing seasonal growth and you just need an increase on your on your operating line for four months all those scenarios are scenarios that we see quite often and are we able to provide support our risk appetite our risk appetite for business outside of Canada is where the strength of a strength of EDC lies we have that network that's going to really bring in that relationship and make sure that not only you the Canadian exporter but the Canadian institution that you deal with is feeling comfortable and supportive of your export adventure for the next slide the third bucket I mentioned is market intelligence and much like other government partners we have the ability to provide you with introductions to buyers intelligence of certain markets and provide commentary on some of your questions and concerns on the next slide it shows you that we do have a knowledge a knowledge solution department and this this department is often issuing or conducting seminars online hosting sessions by our senior economist or chief reps in other countries at the end of the day really being an advisory service piece and if you go to edc.ca you can create a profile under my EDC and flag all the information seminars articles white papers that you may think are relevant to your industry and they'll get sent to your email inbox and you're notified of things that are related to your sector on the final slide knowledge solutions again we collaborate with other institutions in this one in the slides outlining our relationship with fit the form for international trade training but we also do rely on other partners as well such as global affairs Canada the BC provincial government NRC national research council so the entire ecosystem is speaking to each other at the end of the day we sit down and want to make sure that we're collectively meeting the needs of our Canadian and British Columbia exporting businesses to ensure that they remain sustainable and are continuing the growing their brand on the global stage if there's any questions my contact information unfortunately we did not get through but I'm sure Ghana can share that with with the audience on that note I will wrap up my side of the presentation and I thank you for your time and again please do utilize myself for my colleagues on the mainland as part of the toolkit you use in growing your brand outside of Canada thank you so much thank you very much Chris thanks for this great presentation we'll definitely share your contacts with the audience after the webinar so now we'll be moving into the Q&A session and I just want to encourage you to send any questions that you have to the presenters in the question pane in the go to webinar question panel and I hand it over to my colleague Ben Kaliznik for the Q&A session thank you very much Ghana and thank you Chris and to all the presenters for that in all of those informative presentations as Ghana said we're now going to move into the question part of this session and we're going to begin with the questions that have been posed during the presentations and then if we still have some time we will move into some of the questions that were provided at the time of registration so the first question that I'm going to pose and I think I will pose this to you Ghana if you want to stay on there is related to someone who is looking to import turmeric from Belize and then export that into the UK so is there anything that you can say with respect to potential tariffs that might apply and under what agreement that might come from yeah sure thank you Ben and thank you for the question so for the turmeric coming from Belize first to Canada and then to the UK you'll need to consider several things so first the tariffs between Canada and the European market under the CETA for this product for turmeric based R0 provided the product can be proved as originating in Canada now as the product is imported from Belize it has to go through a certain transformation or processing in Canada to be able to get this added value that would qualify this product as being processed with the enough of local content as being processed and originating under the rules of origin in Canada so we can look into that and as I've mentioned in my presentation those rules are specific to each product and specific to the agreement so I don't have them on the top of my head for this turmeric paste but I can look them up and can follow up with you after the webinar and there is also one mechanism that I wanted to mention there is an opportunity to apply for advanced ruling under the CETA and I believe also under the UK the UK TCA agreement so this advanced ruling will provide you with the binding information from the customs authorities from the UK or from the EU markets regarding the origin of your product or the of your product if you are in doubt of course and this is a very very efficient tool and once you receive that advanced ruling information from the customs authorities it will be valid for your subsequent shipments of your product so we can follow up on that definitely okay thank you very much Ghana so can be complicated in some cases when it comes to rules of origin but we can definitely walk people through those rules and please connect with Ghana directly to discuss those so the next question is related to trends in food and spices and I wonder if I could pass that over to to Melissa and Rupert to address in the UK trends in food and spices yeah hi I'm happy to kind of go and answer the the questions on trends I think in the UK certainly trends are moving in the health and wellness direction I think like other other markets with COVID especially in the last year has increased that trend we're seeing you know opportunities for products that offers solutions like in the keto product for example low calories free from allergen free solutions in ingredients that offer salt or sugar reductions in terms of products that also maybe trendy in the market is anything that's clean label people seems to want to be able to read what's behind the packaging understanding what the ingredients are and then certainly one of the biggest trends we're seeing here is veganism flexitarian as they say so this is playing a really a key role and for example spices and ingredients really having opportunity in in in this space because they're really adding to the flavor of the either the meat alternative that are being created so space spices and the ingredients definitely you know part of the development of the food technology for the vegetarian veganism and that space and and then another thing that is quite important to keep in mind is that well the UK is very competitive it's first a sophisticated market through Canadians if you know for a UK company it is easier to source from the EU so to have a proposition that will make someone wants to import from Canada and the products needs to either be different either quite often Canadian fits in as a niche the niche market have innovative solutions something that's not if it's not found in Europe even even better and then another trend that I would really highlight is sustainability anything that's that would be eaten from sourcing all the way to the supply chain the packaging every aspect of the sustainability will be looked at by any buyers so yeah definitely and then maybe on the spice as well anything that's again on the health side of things where anything that is in immunity boosting spices will also be in trend and but again happy to take the discussion offline and offer maybe more market information for any specific companies that wants to know more about the trends in the UK for spices great thank you very much Melissa the next question is what is the situation for Canadian exporters of vodka and whiskey made in Canada to the UK and I believe we received a similar question through the registration process related to to gin and vodka the question there was was how have things changed when going into the UK since Brexit so I don't know if that's something I can pass back to you again Rupert and Melissa to to address nope hello hi um yeah certainly uh the the in very general terms the good news is that it should still be the same so if you are exporting to the UK as part of the European Union before the end of last year then the TCA now should cover you for exporting into the UK it will still be worth checking customs that requirements for example so the processes that you had to go through to export will now need to be UK specific but the requirements should not have changed I think we're going to be saying this a lot when it comes down to individual specific products best have a word with us offline and then we can either advise or connect you with someone who can deal with your specific project product but I think the two key messages there are fundamentally yes continuity but potentially with just some procedural adaptation to the UK specifically thanks great thank you very much Rupert the next question I will send over to you Chris and there's a question here about how how EDC can increase access to working capital and I think you you you discussed this during your presentation so I'm not sure if there's anything else you want to to say there and there's there's another question just about the application process and again I think you spoke to that but if there's anything else you want to add to that maybe now it's a good time yeah no thanks Ben with respect to access to working capital absolutely something we can help with the conversation you know can you just start with myself in conjunction with your bank so reaching out to me directly would probably be the best start so I can have a conversation with you and then we can engage with your bank and talk about what that looks like and how we could move the needle in terms of providing some guarantees to get you access to that capital great thank you very much Chris and again I would encourage the attendees to to contact the presenters directly with any more specific questions there's another question here related to this session and whether there will be any further webinars for other provinces of Canada and and I guess I would just say that we are a British Colombian trade official so our focus is on BC but I but I do know that other I know that our colleagues in other provinces do put on similar sessions and so we I'd be happy to connect with this person offline just to to get them some information on other province specific sessions those are the questions that came in through the through the session again feel free to continue to pose those until we're done today and I can go back to them but I'll just go back into some of the questions that were received during the registration process the first one here is information or updates on entry into the UK for fruits such as BC grown apples strawberries cherries blueberries and possibly vegetables like prepared salads I maybe I will just throw that out there and see if there's anyone on our panel who would like to address that thank you Ben thanks for for the question oh I see Melissa is there as well so as I just wanted to say that as as Rupert said continuity is the main theme of the UK TCA agreement and essentially the the procedures that were in place should be the same but with the with the caveat that they will be applicable to to the UK market so the some preliminary research that we've done on that shows that there is a need for a fit of sanitary certificate when when shipped to the UK when you ship the fruit veggies and and salads to the UK and then select fruit and veggies they also need a certificate of conformity for the market and as I mentioned during my presentation some of you asked the question about the systems approach towards the fruits and veggies that originate in Canada and are shipped to the UK market whether the systems approach that was implemented by the European Union whether it will be in place for for the UK we are looking forward to to the response from the Canadian Food and Inspection Agency we we've asked that question to them and we are looking forward to their response and we'll share it with you for sure so and I think Melissa has something more to add. Thanks Ganna, you covered what I was I was about to say maybe just adding that it is complex so not all fruits and vegetable will need a fit to a sanitary certificate for example most most exports of fruits and vegetables are frozen they're exported from Canada so therefore these don't this don't fall under the same regulation and then I think we can see how it can get complicated or quite complex and maybe just a little last thing to add is the main challenge we've been hearing is around the fit to sanitary products that are leaving the UK for Europe these are now treated as a non-EU third country and are now subject to inspections at the border and that also contributes to logistic challenges post Brexit between the UK and the EU so again I think the message is the same same requirements from Canada into the UK but challenges from UK into the EU as they now require new certifications and inspections so yeah that's it. Thank you very much Melissa I'm going to shift gears now we had quite a few well several questions during the registration process related to identifying and connecting with customers and distributors and wholesalers and so on so we had a question specifically on wild mushrooms and looking for customers in the UK as well as wine and spirit importers and wholesalers and retailers in the UK who can carry the BC portfolio spirits I wonder Rupert if I know I know this was touched upon but if there's anything else you might want to add to that in terms of the role that your team plays with respect to this. Yeah simple answer is thank you very much for the question that is where we come in in terms of connectivity to buyers, distributors or potentially if they're sort of legal or accounting needed suggestions to potentially useful sort of contacts for you we can either come up with ideas work with you on what you're looking for to come up with ideas or where we know direct companies potentially make introductions obviously that's dependent on our level of connectivity to who you're looking for very helpful if you are already clear on who and why you're trying to get in front of them so if we do know then we can work that way but if not then that's okay we can talk through that and one of the aspects that we do look at when when working with BC companies is obviously if you know you're set on the UK and that's great but if you know you're interested in the European market but not quite sure where or how then we can talk through which parts of the European market or single part often if it's best to start in one place is the best beginning point for you whilst CETA applies to the whole of the EU and the EU fundamentally is one market obviously many different countries cultures attitudes and so on within that which can immediately make things either succeed or not depending on where you choose to go and we can sort of at least talk through the thinking on that the only addition I would add is before reaching that point though where you're in touch with us about where how in Europe and who to get in touch with obviously great if you have been in touch with export navigator or with any other sort of assistance to make sure you are at the point at which you're sort of sound prepped planned and and know what you're thinking about or if you've been exporting to other markets elsewhere in the world then you're you're ready you sort of know about it and are good to go but sorry longer answer than I anticipated the answers yes great thank you very much Rupert we've got it just a couple more minutes there are a couple of questions here related to beer which is a favorite topic of mine so I had to get these in one of them is just what what is the craft beer market like in the UK and another question that came in which may be which may need to be taken offline is maybe a little more technical but it's related to how someone can get Canadian grown hops into the UK so I don't know Rupert if you want to if you want to start or Melissa sure we'll both see what we both bring to that one I'll do the first part if Melissa you're okay with the second part so craft beer I'm not speaking from figures I'm speaking from observation it's a shame one of our other colleagues isn't on here who's who's well versed in that it's a an interesting market in terms of both creativity but I think more important in terms of the questioner's interest in terms of consumption in that obviously it is still fundamentally a an experimental and beer loving nation so I think it's certainly the UK is still one definitely worth looking at the challenge would be distinctiveness there's definitely a fondness for Canadian branding on a lot of goods so I think there's a sort of an instinctive acceptance and willingness to look there the issue is then how do you get into the market and through which channels which as I say depending on the product we can talk to one last thing I should have mentioned when I was talking just a moment is the range of help we can give is definitely there and we're open to discussion I don't want to raise expectations about business development though so those pointers ideas and connections definitely in terms of business development at that point obviously as I'm sure most of you would expect it's over to you but definitely happy to have that specific discussion I think the UK could be of interest there sorry Melissa anything on anything else you want to add no maybe just a quick point on the the second question the how to import or I mean export hops products and essentially it's the same so from the first of January 2021 until the end of this year there is a transition if you want to the same process applies so you need a EU attestation of equivalence document and that that can be used again until the end of the year and then from January 2022 it will be a very similar document but a GB Great Britain version of the current EU document and there is in Canada there's an authorized agency that will issue those documents and they're based in Ontario at the agriculture and agri food Canada and then if you do need support with connecting with the agency in Canada again that's something we can assist to facilitate you getting those documents in place but essentially same as we've said before the continuity of trade is the same and by January 2022 it will be a new version of the document Great thank you very much Melissa and Rupert our last question I'm going to to send to you Nicole if you're still with us and it is it's about the UK's new trade policy with Canada but which you've spoken a little bit about but also with key trading partners like China, Southeast Asia or the USA I wonder if you might just say something about that yeah absolutely so I mean I think one of the side effects of our departure from the EU is the fact that we can look much more globally and not be bound into trade agreements that have 27 other partners with them so we do have a very ambitious trade agenda we are currently talking to a number of key partners such as Canada the United States about implementing those free trade agreements but we already have many free trade agreements in place we have the figure of the top of my head that is quite impressive as to how many we've actually secured so we've secured a major trade deal with Japan with Serbia most recently with Vietnam with many other countries so we're taking a very global perspective and I think the fact that we were seeking to join CPTPP really speaks to that as well so you know I'm very optimistic about where we're heading on our trade policy and trade agenda and I think what we can see from the UK is is a much more globally focused and ambitious trade agenda than we were possibly able to maximize being part of a group of 28 thanks very much Nicole we are all out of time if if your questions were not answered today I apologize please know that someone will be following up with you directly to discuss those thank you very much Consul General and Rupert Melissa Chris and Ghana and thank you everyone for attending today's webinar trading with the UK what now post Brexit if you have any other questions please contact us at the contact details that you can find in our presentations I think Ghana mentioned you will receive a follow-up email with a link to a view today's webinar a recording of today's webinar as well as PDF files of the presentations and a survey and we would really appreciate it if you could complete that and provide us with your feedback on behalf of the BC government and our speakers thank you for joining us today and have a great rest of your day


Hello aspirants, welcome to Shankaray's Academy YouTube channel. How to crack civil service in first attempt? What are the steps required? Let us see in today's discussion. The first important step, knowing your syllabus. See, syllabus is your guidebook. Only by knowing the syllabus, you can find the relevant articles. You can filter the information better. Many aspirants, even after years of preparation, do not know the entire syllabus. They will know GS4 is ethics. But when you ask the subcomponents of the ethics paper, they will stagger. So this is why knowing the syllabus is very important. So read the entire problems as well as main syllabus. Whenever you can find time, scan through it. Get it into your subconscious mind. It will be beneficial. Now moving on to the next important step. The next important step is regarding consistency. See, civil service preparation is a marathon. It is a one year of preparation. So maintaining consistency is very important. But many aspirants struggle in this aspect. They get diverted. So how to improve consistency? Have a proper time schedule. Based on your daily commitments, design a schedule. Do not copy from others. Because daily commitments varies from person to person. A working professional will have a different set of commitments. A married person will have a different set of commitments. A person going to classes will have a different set of commitments. So based on your daily commitments, fix a proper timing schedule. It should be practical. It should be sustainable in the long run. Then only you can maintain consistency. So go for a proper time schedule. It will help you to maintain consistency. So this is the next important point. Maintaining consistency. Now moving on to the next step. See, the next step is regarding having a proper strategy. See, strategy means which paper to study first. Which subject to study first. That kind of strategies. For example, if you are starting a preparation right now, I would advise you to start with optional. Because initial six months of a preparation will be important for optional. After December or January, there will be a time crunch and you won't have enough time to prepare optional. So this is a proper strategy. So such kind of strategies will make your preparation organized. It will be smooth. So how to devise such strategies? Talk with your teachers. Talk with your mentors, seniors, successful candidate. They will help you to design a proper strategy. After designing the strategy, follow it consistently. So this is the next important point. Having a proper strategy. Now let us move on to the next important step. See, the next important step is regarding motivation. Motivation is very important for civil service preparation. Only if you are motivated, we can study on daily basis. We can push ourselves. But many aspirants struggle to maintain motivation. They get diverted. So how to bring motivation? The first important step. Surround yourself with positive people. An optimistic environment will improve your motivation. Ignore negative people. Minimize contact with pessimistic people. See, the sad truth of life, there are going to be negative people in our life. Friends, family, relatives, some people in this comment section, they are going to be negative. It is a sad truth of life. But the thing is, we can ignore them. We can surround ourselves with positive people. Do not give power to negativity. Believe in yourself. Surround yourself with optimistic environment. It will improve your motivation, trust me. There is also another way. Aspirants can go for short-term goals. Daily goals, weekly goals. It is easy to maintain motivation when you have short-term goals. So surround yourself with optimistic environment, short-term goals. This will improve your motivation. Now moving on to the next important step. See, the next important step is stress management. We all know about stress. We have experienced that it is draining, it is emotionally exhausting, it reduces our efficiency. So stress management is very important. How to manage stress? See, stress management varies from people to people. Some people will manage stress by doing exercise, yoga, meditation, listening to music. It varies. So have a proper stress management technique. I like it 15 to 30 minutes of a daily schedule for stress management. It will be beneficial in the long run. Now moving on to the next important step. See, this important step is called LRP. Learning, revising and practicing. These three components are equally important. They are the mantra of UPSC. So consistently learn, consistently revise and consistently practice. So these are the important steps to crack civil service in your first attempt. See, these steps may seem trivial to some aspirants. But the sad truth is majority of the aspirants do not follow these basic guidance. They get diverted and they pay the price. So try to follow these basic steps. It will produce results. Make a list, paste it on your wall and whenever you can see it, it will help you. That's it. That's the end of the discussion. This is Gautam signing off.


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This will be how an ultimate villain behaves, yet this is the man or you guys practically relation. If killing people can sometimes be justified, then slavery can also sometimes be justified. I wouldn't go into the mainstream slavery, that's just okay for you, yeah?  They're trying to keep their humanity intact. In the pre-modern period, you couldn't have war without slavery any more than you could have war without weapons and killing. You make a mistake claiming that Sharia is somehow the solution, and this is what I'm exposing right now, Sharia is not a solution, so let's talk about the elephant in the room.  As I said earlier, not all Muslims have turned off their compassion switch and they go out of their ways to make excuses, such as how Islam promoted compassion, that it set in motion the world where slavery will eventually be abolished. Yes, it's a completely fabricated claim, I agree with you on that, but at least I can understand that they're trying to keep their humanity intact. In fact, this is the same claim modern day to day, Christian apologists make as well. But you, Akikachu, don't take that approach, because once you have lost all compassion and humanity, it's easier to become a literalist, because Quran literally advocates cruel practices like slavery. I wouldn't go into the mainstream slavery, the idea of treating human beings as commodity.  I'm particularly troubled by sex slavery.  Who would clean your house a day and do other things at night? Does this not send shivers down your spine? Is this a solution that you were just offering about what human rights, what the core family is destroyed or something? And this is the alternative that you're offering? Maybe it does to James and every other sane person listening to this, but look how cool you are, Akikachu, with the possibility. You might be getting turned on by this practice. Quran allows this in multiple places, such as chapter 4 verse 24, 25, chapter 23 verse 6, 24, 31, and many more. How could this not be wicked and cruel? Ordinary Muslims are troubled by this, and I inquired further. If I can't make you feel for other humans that you intend to take as sex slaves, let's reverse the rules.   Would you be okay with that, Akikachu? Now, can you answer that one? Maybe you can't feel that for other women who are not related to you, but surely, even as a sadist like yourself, could feel that for your female family members. If not, then I can only hope that other men who supposedly follow you don't think like you.  This is not some far-fetched case. This is exactly what happened with Rehana Abint Zaid, whose husband was killed by Muhammad's men after the massacre of Bandit Razer. She refused to marry Muhammad out of respect for her dead husband, but eventually married Muhammad after she got sick of being the slave girl of Muhammad. Moreover, the infamous story of Safiya, when her father, brother, and husband were killed, Safiya was taken as a slave girl, and Muhammad slept with her on the very first night. This was so outrageous that even one of the servants of Muhammad stood guard at the tent. When asked by Muhammad, hey, what are you doing here, boy? Oh messenger of God, this young woman had just been married and you killed her father, husband, and brother. So I did not trust her not to harm you. The prophet laughed and said, good. If we film this, imagined it in flex, every saint, Muslim or not, every saint person would be outraged by this behavior. This will be how an ultimate villain behaves, yet this is the man or you guys practically worship. There's so many such stories. Let's look at this one. Once Abu Saad says after the battle of Banu Al-Mustalik, we came across some captive women. We asked the prophet, if we should drop our load, my load, I mean, seamen, in or we pull out. The prophet says, do what you want. Allah controls the pregnancy. Bukhari chapter four, chapter 138.  Imagine my soldiers come to me and ask me, oh, general Sultan, whether we should pull out or drop the load in the sisters of so and so we have just killed. And you're worried about the falling fertility rate? This also reminds me when Stalin was told about the mass scale rapes of the German women at the hands of the Red Army. Stalin simply said, they've been through a lot. Let them enjoy. This is literally what Muhammad did. In another instance, a guy by the name of Salama says he captured the prettiest girl in Arabia when he took her back to Abu Bakr, he gave her to him as a gift. So he must have won seven, five, five.  And this merciful prophet and Sharia enabled it. The reality is to win a war in the pre-modern period, it was all about manpower. The main factor in whether your people would live or die was numbers.  So you only had two options.  Neither option is good, right? But that's just the nature of war. You always have to use violence against the other side.  So Harris, you want to criticize Islam and call Islam barbaric for having slavery, but imagine if I asked you this question, do you support using weapons in war?  Do you support that? Because all of that is violent. All of that is barbaric. Presumably, you'd say, yeah, of course, I support weapons and killing because how else are you going to fight war and defend yourself? Well, that's exactly the point with slavery. In the pre-modern period, you couldn't have war without slavery any more than you could have war without weapons and killing. In other words, if killing people can sometimes be justified, then slavery can also sometimes be justified. And this is exactly what your friend, apostate prophet, accepted with open arms in our debate last year. Imagine in the future they invent a new technology for war where a laser shoots from space and can directly target any person in the world. And the technology is so precise that there are zero casualties other than the intended target. Then people in this future might look back at our time and say, look how barbaric those people in the 21st century were.  Would that make any sense? That's exactly what you're doing by criticizing Islam for slavery. You should have just acknowledged that slavery could be completely justified in certain circumstances, which by the way are the circumstances people have lived in for 99% of human history. Now, if you want to argue that Islam requires enslaving people today, I would say that that is not correct. It depends on the Imam. If you read Fiqh, Islamic jurisprudence, this is very clear. There's no requirement that people captured in war are enslaved. This is discussed in classical Fiqh books. For example, Bida'at al-Mujtahed by Ibn Rushd in the 12th century, go to Kitab al-Jihad, and he summarizes the position of the four Sunni schools of Fiqh. The Imam has the option to pardon people and forego taking slaves in war. The Imam does not have the option to suspend for example, hudud punishments for lashing, like lashing for fornicators, but taking slaves is one of those issues where the Imam can forego if it's in the best interest of the Muslim community. So in modern times, a hypothetical Imam could exercise this option and still be 100% consistent with the most strict understanding of traditional Islamic law.  You could respond to me and say, well, Daniel, fine, slavery could be justified in the past, but now with modern technology, modern weapons, clearly slavery could never be justified. That means Islamic rules regarding slavery are not justifiable in our modern context, which means at least one aspect of Islamic law is obsolete. And if one aspect of Islamic law is obsolete due to modern technology, then why not all of Islamic law? This is actually the argument that a lot of Muslim liberal reformists make, but the response to this is simple. In the past, the low level of technology meant that in order to wield political power, war was necessary, which meant that slavery was necessary. The only difference today is there are bombs, nukes, fighter jets, drones, chemical and biological weapons. So now war is not about manpower. Basically, you have to believe that these new technologies are such a blessing and we're better off because at the very least, no one needs slavery to defend themselves, right? We live in a world of nukes and drones and weapons of mass destruction, so slavery is no longer needed. So the question is, is this actually a better world? Well, the harms associated with modern technologies like nukes and drones and mass surveillance, and you can't go to the bathroom without security agencies constantly monitoring your every move and every communication, these harms are far, far greater than the harms that existed in Islamic slavery. Frankly, these modern technologies are more terrifying. We have to look at the whole package. Which is the better world? One with the constant threat of nukes, nuclear annihilation and constant terrorizing of the world's poor people with trillion-dollar weapons programs? Let's ask the people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima or the Vietnamese children with horrifying birth defects because of chemical weapons like Agent Orange. Let's ask the Palestinian Syrian refugees or children who are being burned alive with white phosphorus. In light of these modern technological horrors, the practice of Islamic slavery actually seems a far better alternative in the context of war, even if it were practiced today. No, slavery wasn't abolished because of the modern-day warfare. Slavery was, the reason that we don't have slavery is because the enlightenment forced us to realize that owning other human beings is not a good idea. Now that is just the outcome of that. A good book I recommend is Lawrence Keely's War Before Civilization. He explains that pre-modern war was primarily about manpower. The side that had the largest army was usually going to win. And if you had too few people, this made you an easy target for a larger group to attack you and wipe you out. This meant that women were very valuable in pre-modern societies because your society's ability to reproduce and build up the population is limited by the number of fertile wombs you have. Keely says, and I quote, although the loss of even a large percentage of males will have no direct influence on a group's demographic fortunes, the loss of organe of fertile women can mean the difference between population decline and growth. This is why Keely argues, all pre-modern civilizations took sex slaves. Again, this was a necessary aspect of war. If you did not take concubines, you were at a major disadvantage militarily because you either take concubines or your people get wiped off the face of the earth. There is no third option. So given that stark reality, yes, taking sex slaves was not only morally justified, it was morally necessary. And really that's enough for the argument, but it's worth noting that the Sharia's rules on concubines and slaves in general are the most humane out of any other civilization. Again, slavery is not supposed to be a fun time, but Islam explicitly gives slaves many rights. They can't be mutilated. They can't be killed. They can't be prostituted for women if she gives birth to her master's baby. The baby is free. And she also is freed automatically when her master dies. These rules ensured that captured slaves very quickly integrated within larger Islamic society, especially after one or two generations. Contrast this with other societies in history that maintain a permanent subjugated slave class based on race or ethnicity, Islamic slavery is not like that. And that's why we see, for example, the Mamluks in the Middle Ages, who were a ruling class of Muslim slaves and the descendants of slaves, some of whom even reached a level of sultans and amirs in the Muslim caliphate as slaves. So the argument is very simple, Harris, but you haven't responded to anything that I've said. All you're doing is gish-galloping.