Improve support to companies looking to export and help communities looking to attract investments.

What success looks like

Double the number of high-growth firms in Canada by 2025; increase Canada's goods and services exports—from natural resources, advanced manufacturing, agri-food and others—by 30 per cent by 2025; increase global investment in Canada; and create more well-paying, middle-class jobs for Canadians.

Government's narrative on progress

The government is encouraging global investment and promoting Canada through the creation of the Invest in Canada Agency and through the addition of 20 new investment-focused trade commissioners to the Trade Commissioner Service, with an additional five in the next year. The government has successfully completed the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. The government also recently signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) with 10 countries in the Pacific region and launched negotiations toward a comprehensive free trade agreement between the Mercosur member states and Canada. Canada is currently negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) with the Pacific Alliance, which will upgrade its association with this trading bloc made up of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. The latest round took place in May 2018. Since January 2016, CanExport has provided financial support to over 1400 Small and Medium Enterprise-led projects aimed at diversifying export markets, in a variety of sectors, and reaching over 90 different markets around the world. To date, for every hundred supported projects, participating firms have reported on average some 92 export successes at the time of project completion, for a collective impact of over $376 million in exports to new markets. In 2018, the Invest Canada-Community Initiatives (ICCI) program, which provides support to communities to improve their capacity to attract, retain and expand foreign direct investment, allocated $3.5 million to 240 projects from 88 communities to attract job-creating investment. The application process for 2019 ICCI projects closed on October 17, 2018.  A total of 97 applicants submitted proposals for over $8.7 million, and 85 applicants were approved for a total of $5.3 million. These projects will be completed from January 1 to December 31, 2019. Budget 2017 announced $950 million to superclusters in highly innovative industries, and in February 2018, in cooperation with the private sector and academic partners, the government announced the creation of five superclusters (Digital Technology; Protein Industries; Advanced Manufacturing; Artificial Intelligence; and Ocean) that will create great new opportunities for Canadian companies to innovate, scale up and export. To support Canadian firms and increase exports to new markets, Budget 2018 provides up to $75 million to build a stronger diplomatic presence and Trade Commissioner Service salesforce in China and Asia, as well as other initiatives to open market opportunities in the region.

Note: this is the government's own description, not an independent assessment.