Export Development Canada

Since we last spoke, we've got over $300 million now of LOI commitments from lending partners.

So EDC Canada is one.

We have another export credit agency, as well as Sandvik out of Sweden is our provider.

equipment provider, so they're going to provide a financing package.

Fair enough.

But we put that news out because we want the market to show that there is interest here.

And EDC understands that too.

Having their presence there is, as I've mentioned to you before, it's like the bulk.

The underlying technology of a financial product or service does not determine its legal nature, the OSFI said.

The latest joint initiative also builds on earlier tokenization efforts in Canada because in March, the Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, RBC, and TD Bank said...

they completed a tokenized pilot called Project Samara, which aimed to evaluate the role of blockchain technology in improving government bond issuance and settlement.

So there you go.

And the new strategic export office that the Prime Minister just created, hopefully, will do good work, but only if it works with the structures we have already.

We have Export Development Canada, which provides trade financing, the Canadian Commercial Corporation, which helps Canadian companies to sell to foreign governments, the Trade Commission Service, which makes connections on the ground, Invest in Canada, whose mission is to attract investment from everywhere, including Europe, the new Defense Investment Agency.

You see, if all of these entities pull in different directions and become a state within the state, we'll fail.

We need to have a team Canada approach and to work with provinces, with big business, and so on.

Next, the EDC says Canada must look inward to raise export values.

Export Development Canada, the federal export credit agency, released a report claiming that improving domestic processing is just as important as new trade deals or more coastal exports.

Bolstering processing could result in a nearly $1 billion boost to the GDP in the next decade, according to the report.

And finally, a Stellantis strike is looking more likely.

But as we know, the upfront construction costs, you know, the liabilities on the construction side can be quite high.

So how do we start to de-risk some of that? Can EDC have a nuclear specific mandate, right? Look at...

equity co-investment, reducing some of that upfront risk, whether that's through backstops, for example.

And can we look at what EDF has done, for example, to take direct equity stakes? How do we find that right blend? And this is something I've been thinking of about nuclear, but also the energy sector writ large.

So this one's showing Canada has awarded initial contracts worth up to fifty million that will increase the number of drones currently deployed by the Canadian Armed Forces tenfold.

Further down here it says, "Building on Canada's support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Prime Minister announced today a series of additional investments to bolster Ukraine's defense and long-term security, approximately three hundred and fifty million to deliver critical air defense interceptors, and then nearly twenty-three million in funding to bolster the capacities of Ukraine's security architecture, providing nearly four hundred and thirty-five million in new loan guarantees to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to support energy security, including winter gas purchases, allocating two hundred million in concessional loans through Export Development Canada to support Ukraine's reconstruction, providing an additional ten million to the Ukraine Energy Support Fund." We can't afford this.

Like, we can't afford a dollar of this stuff.

This is unbelievable.