Opportunity Begins at Home: Enhancing Canadian Commercial Services Exports

The role of commercial services in global trade is growing significantly, but Canada’s performance in this area has not kept pace with other major services exporters. It is imperative that Canada has a coherent strategy to ensure the competitiveness of its key service-producing industries. This study proposes the elements of a national strategy for commercial services exports.

First, domestic regulation of services must take into account the opportunities that the global services marketplace presents. In too many cases, domestic factors have crowded out the capacity to pursue attractive international growth opportunities. Second, there must be more effective promotion, and facilitation of trade and investment in service industries, to allow and encourage Canadian firms to compete globally. And third, trade policy should target areas of the services economy (for example, banking or transportation) for liberalization in exchange for improved access to the markets of our trading partners.

In short, it is in Canada’s interest to increase its capacity to sell services to the international marketplace. This report explores what needs to be done for this to happen.