Canadian exporters operate in a global marketplace with aggressive competitors and a global economy continually in flux. Changes to the geography and composition of growth over the past dozen years have been nothing less than transformative. Growth in the emerging-market and developing economies is now outpacing that of the advanced economies, creating both new markets and new sources of competition.
And the knowledge economy is becoming an important source of trade in services. The financial crisis has, in many ways, only accelerated these changes. Our exporters are adapting but it has been gut-wrenching. In the wake of the financial crisis, our exports were harder hit than in any post-war recession, decreasing by about 17 per cent over three quarters.