How CCC helps Canadian exporters in the Indo-Pacific

– Hi everyone. Thank you very much for joining us today in this webinar. I’m Claude Gendron, the director of Customer Acquisition and Outreach at the Canadian Commercial Corporation, also known as CCC. Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge that CCC is located on the traditional and unseated territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial. We decided to organize this webinar as a result of increased engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, alongside with other government of Canada trade portfolio partners. 

– Recently minister Ng led trade missions with several countries, including Malaysia, Vietnam, Korea, Turkey exporters in the Indo-Pacific Market, and CCC has great services and tools that could be of interest and could benefit exporters in their trade journey. 

– So in today’s presentation, I’ll be speaking to you about who is CCC, what are the services and programs that are offered to the exporters, what are some of the success stories that we had so far to explain and to give you, you know, some ideas of potential projects that you could be putting forward using a G2G contracting approach. I’ll be speaking to where we can find the opportunities. Which partners you could reach out to in seeking some assistance and identify those opportunities? What are the tools and resources available to you in funding opportunities? And then in the last portion of our presentation, we speak to, how do we get started with CCC? Should you have a solution that could be of interest and you potentially would see a potential fit in exploring a G2G contract? How would you get started with CCC? What are the steps you need to take and where you can find some information that could be useful to help in your trade journey? And the last portion will include a Q&A. So really happy to take any questions that you may have. 

– So, CCC, Canadian Commercial Corporation, was established by an act in the Canadian parliament in 1946. We are Canada’s government-to-government contracting agency. We’re the only agency of the government of Canada who offer international contracting expertise to help exporter succeed in the international marketplace. We support exporters of all sizes that have solutions to fulfill the need of a government. And we can work with any level of authorities in a country. That includes federal, provincial, state, municipal, prime minister, presidential, you know, offices, also parastatal, state-owned enterprise, other crown corporation, or as I mentioned, state-owned enterprise. It could be port authorities or airport authorities. Any level of authority under, you know, specific contracting ability, we could do business with. And I’ll speak more about it further down in my presentation.

– Last fiscal year, CCC supported 15,000 jobs globally. We have a huge impact, you know, in domestically and also internationally creating jobs. We presided $3.2 billion contract last fiscal year. Over the last decade, we supported over $23 billion contract. On the slide here, you see some of the sectors that were involved the most. You’ve got defense, aerospace, infrastructure in ICT and other sectors. What is important for you to understand is that we can support exporters that have solutions to fulfill the need of a government across sectors. We need to align with government of Canada’s commitment abroad. You think about the Glasgow Pact, you think about the COPE, engagement on energy transition, but we really can support, you know, solutions from a range of sectors if they’re relevant to a country needs and priorities. So CCC is engaged. We have a team that is engaged internationally in connecting with government authorities, government buyers.

– Last fiscal year, we were engaged in 62 countries. I believe the previous year, we were engaged in 90 countries. That varies a lot every year. You’ve got a list of countries here where we’ve been the most actives. You know, if you think about Latin America, all the western part of the continent, we’ve been very active. Caribbean, we have a good brand over there. If you think about Europe in the defense sector, Northern and Eastern Europe, we’ve been very active. But also on the aerospace side a bit in Western Europe. in the Indo-Pacific, you can see some of the countries, Australia included, Bangladesh included, where we’ve been engaging, and a little bit in Africa. So, I mean, our engagement abroad are dictated or geared based on interest of government authorities in engaging with CCC, in acquiring solutions from Canada, and also exporter who are developing leads and are seeking CCC’s assistance in exploring potential G2G contracting.

– For keen exporters, we have two prime contractor programs. We have also a sourcing program for the government of Canada. We have a database or tool, an online service that we provide free of charge, free of cost exporters, global bid opportunity finder. I’ll speak to it later in the presentation. We also assist exporters in their trade journey by providing advisory services, G2G coaching, introductions to missions abroad, you know, any potential troubleshooting. We also have an internal policy of no wrong door to customers. So if you reach out to us and it’s not a perfect fit, but we can help you redirecting you to another government of Canada partners, we will do that. So in the next slides, I’ll be speaking to the US DoD Prime Contractor program and International Prime Contractor program. I don’t have any slides on the sourcing for government of Canada, but I’ll just speak very briefly about it. When Canada makes a commitment internationally, whether it’s to assist on, you know, immediate response for a national disaster, or is to support the current, you know, Ukraine’s effort in in the field with the current, you know, war, CCC will provide, will facilitate the sourcing and deliver, look after the logistics and contracting component of the sourcing program. So we’ve provided a lot of assistance to Ukraine.

– Right now, we’ll continue to do that in fulfilling government of Canada’s commitment. But we’re also active , you know, commitments by the government of Canada to intervene in immediate assistance for firefighting, for instance, or, you know, natural disaster or earthquake. So in the next slide, I’ll speak to the US DoD Prime Contractor. And after that, the International Prime Contractor programs that we manage. So since 1956, CCC is the custodian to the defense production and share agreement with United States Department of Defense. The United States Department of Defense is the largest, by far, defense market in the world, with over $900 billion spending. What is important for you to know, whether you’re in the defense sector or you have solutions that is outside of it, if you look at the key spending categories by the US DoD, you’ll find out that, you know, a lot of spending does not touch on the core of the defense sector. It touch on support services as well. If you think about military hospital, educational services, management of facilities, cleantech solution, waste management solutions, telecommunication, internet service providers or connectivity, there’s also a number of solutions that brings verticals that could be applied to on the defense sector. If you think about AI solution, cybersecurity solution. So there are many needs, you know, that could be relevant for your business. 

– So CCC is entrusted into the US Department of Defense DFARS regulations supplements as Canada’s trusted acquisition partner. So for any solicitation of 250,000 US dollars and above, CCC can act as prime of prime contractor. We get funded by the King-in-Parliament to operate that business line, so there’s no cost for companies to participate. You know, what are the opportunities for you? What are the benefits that you may get in partnering with CCC on supplying to the US DoD? But what is important for you to know is that through the DPSA, companies have access directly to the US DoD to public standard opportunities that are listed on SAM.gov. So it’s a waiver to the American Act. So you don’t need to establish a domestic presence in the US. From Canada, can supply directly, and it’s a duty free entry of goods.

– So I’ll be speaking here on the International Prime Contractor program. This program operates very differently from our US DoD program. US DoD works on public tender solicitation that are, you know, published by the grant of the United States Department of Defense. On the International Prime Contractor program, we worked outside of a competitive process by providing an alternative to contracting, which is source-source contractiong. So you may say, “Well, you know, how can we do source-source contract?” Most of contracts come through RFIs and are followed by RFPs.” Well, CCC, you know, a chunk of our business is done through source-source contracts. So we have a legal ability to sign contract with legal effect as signed by the government of Canada in elevating a potential bilateral pursuit between Canada and a foreign government, where a CCC will provide a contract, a guaranteed contract performance under terms and conditions. And this would bring the right level of confidence to the government authority to turn to another government to undertake the work. And by doing so, we’ll provide responsible business conduct and oversight from cradle to grave throughout the project. And CCC will subcontract domestically in Canada with a kin exporter qualified in order to be able to deliver that work. So that mechanism works when a contracting authority in a country have exception to contracting law, legal exceptions allowing the authority to justify a source-source contract. And this justification could be, you know, the country would have their own justification, but it could be anything from, you know, immediate assistance needed, high priority of the government, highly complex solutions where the government may not have the right capabilities in-house within its own government or within this own industry to undertake. You know, if you take a country who never acquire any AI solutions but have demonstrated, you know, the need to acquire these solutions for some of its critical infrastructure or for service to the population. Or it could be, you know, you look at what happened recently on cyber attacks, you know, attacking a whole country, while some countries that have weaknesses to protect itself against cyber attack may be quite interested in exploring a fast, you know, a G2G contract instead of spending two, three years running a tender and not having the right capabilities in house to assess the proper companies brings risk in failing on the tender as well and adding further more delays in acquiring the solutions.

– So CCC brings, you know, an alternative way to contracting and also allow our country to strengthen bilateral relations by partnering with Canada. So we are a triple A credit, you know, rating country. So providing a certain guarantee of contract performance I think adds value. We don’t have a specific template in working with the government. Really, we will enable a discussion alongside with the qualified exporter and we’ll discuss what could be the potential scope pricing, you know, scope of the program and then we’ll start it from there. What works well are solutions that are integrative or turnkey solutions to fulfill the need of the government. If you aware of a government who is really ambitious in acquiring solution, and you have that solution, there may be a way to explore, engaging way before an RFI would come in or an RFP. How does the G2G contracting works?

– So as I mentioned, CCC, and most of the exporters that we support will come to CCC with an opportunity that they’ve been identified, that they’ve been… Some level of engagement with the government authority in country and up to the point where the government is interested and is looking at how they could acquire the solution of the exporter. And 80% of the companies that we support comes, you know, with these solutions. In the other 20%, my team will facilitate introductions with our trade commissioner service or colleagues that post in missions abroad to introductions with the government authority, or we’ll connect with the government authority at a trade show, for instance.

– So there are multiple ways we can engage with the government buyer, but, obviously, faceting introductions means that it could take a bit of time before a solution becomes available or mature. Some governments would reach out to us directly because they’re looking at acquiring solution on a very short turnaround. And in this case, then we will look at what are the qualified exporters we have that have that solution available. Obviously, my team, you know, we are fair and we have a code of conduct. So we are limited in our ability to share the opportunity to several exporters. If you have only one exporter with that solution, we can share that solution. If you have more than one exporter that are qualified with us that could deliver on that solution, it would be difficult for us. We wouldn’t have to share it, we wouldn’t have the right capabilities in house to run a mini-tender.

– So, it works, you know, really well when the exporter comes to us with a solution or with our embassy colleagues, you know, will inform us about the potential company who could be well suited for an opportunity. But, you know, the first level of engagement is a call between us and the exporter to learn about the company’s interest in market and where we see potential opportunities, and share some of the solution that they would think would be best fit. So some of the success stories that we had, and there are many.

– Really, I encourage you to… So in Australia, we delivered training simulators to the Royal Australian Air Force. That was for the C-130J Hercule Master. The authorities, the Air Force was looking at realistic and immersive virtual environment. And with blue drop performance learning this solution. So with Bangladesh, we did some work with Biman Airlines. They wanted to increase domestic connectivity and offer high frequency services for Bangladesh and also within neighboring countries in South Asia. So we facilitated the sales of Dash 8 200 aircraft, twin-engine aircrafts, three aircraft from the Havilland to support growth in their, you know, domestic market and neighboring countries.

– Same country, Bangladesh again, with the Agricultural Development Corporation, the BADC, we are fulfilling 100% of the needs of the country in potash to support for use in a agricultural fertilizer. And that effort has allowed the country to triple their exports of fertilizer. We used to provide 30% of the, fulfill 30% of the needs of the country up until the war in Ukraine. And since that has grown to fulfilling all of the needs of the country with Canpotex.

– So moving out of Indo-Pacific, another great project that we’ve done in the infrastructure sector and transportation was with Bermuda, with the Ministry of Transportation. So the government was looking at redeveloping the terminal at the L.F. Wade International Airport, Wade International Airport. They wanted to improve passenger flow and serve for future transportation needs. So through a PPP involving a special vehicle or purpose for 30 years of concession period, CCC delivery solution alongside with ACOM, where we built a new terminal and providing financing for the construction as well. That allowed to add checkings, that allowed to add spaces for departure, for arrivals, really bring a state-of-the-art, you know, technology to the airport. There was a international recognition for that project. There was a price in 2017, you know, by international magazine stating that that was the deal of the year in infrastructure and also, you know, praise from the Bermuda prime minister and minister of finance. 

– In Peru in Latin America, we delivered the largest drip irrigation project in the world. It was… The Ministry of Agricultural Development and Irrigation was looking at… They were interested to improve the farmlands and cultivation in Newland as well and supplying potable water to families in the area. So we implemented the third stage of the CHAVIMOCHIC infrastructure project in a three-way contract between CCC, the Peruvian government, and HATCH to improve 48,000 of acres of existing farmlands and open up 62,000 of acres of new land of cultivation. That led to also supply of potable water to 40,000 families, which is amazing. 

– In the clean energy, recently, we concluded a contract to extend the duration of life of C1, a nuclear reactor, a CANDU reactor with a state on enterprise of Romania. So providing emission-free, low cost, and uninterrupted flow of power, the government of Romania, you know, had to cope with a increased demand of energy while having to ensure the, you know, maintenance and extension of the duration of life of that nuclear facility. So one of its assets, you know, nuclear reactor needed to be some maintenance work and to be extended for the duration of life. A contract of $780 million. CCC undertook a contract as prime contractor. And Atkins also had a direct contract to protect its IP with the government of Romania. And CCC’s role allow to lift a performance bond on the contract. So in the G2G contracting, there are some possibilities to reduce or lift some performance bonds with CCC’s involvement. It’s a case by case discussion with the government authority. But this is something to also bear in mind. 

– Bolivia, you know, a great success from CCC with the government of Bolivia a few years ago. I believe it was in 2019. And the government sought some assistance close to the Amazonia, just a region that was affected by a major first fire. So in six days, CCC was able to deliver a contract with Caulson Aircrane to deploy two Sikorsky aircraft and a Chinook heavy-lift helicopter to provide a real fighting capabilities. It was quite pretty impressive to be able to device such contract in such a timeframe. Obviously, a lot of contracts we do will take several months, but it shows how, you know, a G2G contracting mechanism can be a game changer when protecting, you know, the Amazonia, you know? A key area for environmental, you know, that requires environ protection, but also help all the neighboring countries that were affected by this forest fire. And I believe we did another project, I think it’s in the for firefighting assistance. 

– Again, on the same, you know, same domain, firefighting through the European Union’s civil protection mechanism, CCC signed a G2G contract with several governments for the sales of the Havilland aircraft with Croatia, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. All of these three success stories brings us to, you know, where can you find opportunities? Where can we find opportunities to supply to government authorities, whether it’s through tenders or whether it’s outside of a tender using a G2G contracting mechanism. 

– So CCC works very closely. We are part of the trade portfolio of the government of Canada, alongside with Export Development Canada, who provides financing and insurance products and the trade commissioner service of Global Affairs Canada, who support exporters in 160 cities around the globe. I believe it’s now 162 cities around the globe with a thousand employees to support exporters. They also funding programs CanExport is one of them, who can support travel in a new market to cover some of the cost for travel. And this is a very popular program. So when they launch it, I really encourage you to consider applying if you’re looking at new markets in the new Pacific. So, CCC gets referrals from partners on either exporters or buyer leads. We work really closely with a trade commercial service when it comes the time to seek introductions to a buyer abroad. Also to check if the buyer has the right contracting authority to deliver source-source contracting. We also get referrals from Export Development Canada. CCC can work with any financial institution in the world. We’re not really binded. But also, we work very closely with EDC on a number of transactions. So they’re a great partner to have. I think internationally, when we look at G2G contracting, if a project has been already identified by Regional Development Bank, we are unlikely to support because they will enforce a tendering processes. And our business internationally mostly focused on G2G contracting, which is outside any RFP and way before, you know, an RFI comes in. But we work very closely with trade commissaries at trade shows in doing B2Bs with exporters, but also in connecting with government buyers. One example is CANSEC. I myself coordinate foreign delegations to CANSEC. So for those exporters who qualify to a service, we’ll help facilitate introductions to buyers as well. I’ve attended the AUSA trade conference in Washington, you know, working with exporters and connecting them to buyers. We have business development colleagues who travel around the globe, and some will be participating in a trade mission to Philippine and Indonesia and other trade missions to come, including Australia, where we can help introductions and also support you on the ground.

– A great tool that we offer with our marketing team is the Global Bid Opportunity Finder, GBOF. GBOF.ca is a service that was developed by CCC free of cost to companies to connect exporters. So if you’re looking at 10 public tender opportunities from abroad, this tool encapsulate opportunities from 200 jurisdiction around the globe. There’s 5,000 and over opportunities listed day. There are a number of countries from Indo-Pacific that are listed there. Philippine is one of them. So really encourage you to look at public tender opportunities that are listed on GBOF. Not to confuse with the other program that we manage or international prime contractor, as I mentioned, where we explore G2G contracting away from a competitive process. So we wanna make sure at CCC that you’ve got opportunities to look at both, you know, tenders and also explore opportunities outside of tenders. 

– So in terms of connecting business through G2G, we will work with exporters that qualify for a service. We have to due diligence process. The first one when we connect with a new exporter is to assess the company’s managerial, technical and financial capabilities. So we have a questionnaire. We won’t ask for financial statement at its early stage, but later on we will ask. We wanna make sure that the company that we can partner with is strong enough financially to mitigate some risk of the project. As the right level of expertise to do business abroad, as some experience in exporting, I’ve already sold a solution to government authority in the past, whether it’s in Canada or abroad. And then once we have completed that due diligence, CCC can be exposed in discussion with a buyer alongside with the exporter, and we will discuss with the exporter the right approach. We also consult with our embassy abroad, our geographic desk as well at global affairs to explore what’s the best, the relevant approach in engaging with a buyer, and whether it makes sense, you know, to target a specific country given our relations with that country. 

– Once we have an opportunity identified, we’ll validate with the government authority their interest in working with CCC. We’ll always follow the lead of the exporter in doing so, but the exporter may change his mind further down the road, and leveraging a G2G with CCC or may wanna add CCC to the table, despite the fact that he may be really well advanced in securing a contract with an exporter or with a government buyer. And once an opportunity is well firmed up with the government authority, we’ll complete a due diligence on a business development, due diligence on the specific to the opportunity. So we’ll assist the opportunity 360 degrees, what are the risks in market, with the government, with the history of that government? Is it a country like to Canada? Are there any unforeseen risk that we identify? Do we have any financing attached to the project, or is it a PPP? Is the company able to provide financing? So we’ll look at everything around strongly the project, all the aspects of the project before CCC can make a decision in proceeding with the G2G. And then we’ll start developing their contracts. 

– We’ll work closely with the exporter on all the provisions of the contract, both domestic contract and then the contract between CCC and the government authority and being targeted. So how do we get started? If you have a product or service that you believe could fulfill a need of a government authority, if you already have discussion with the government in the Indo-Pacific or elsewhere where you see potential fit for CCC to explore a government-to-government contract, if you have the right capacity and financial strain to pursue some, you know, deals, and the deals that we support vary. With our International Prime Contracting program, so internationally across sectors, our team would support deals that could be 10 million and above. If the deal is lower, let’s say $2 million, but very straightforward, we’re happy to take a look at it. But the most of our effort will be geared at supporting leads that are above $10 million. 10 million above. For our international… 

– For US DoD Prime Contractor program, we’ll be supporting projects that are valued at 250,000 US dollars and above. And this one works on solicitation through SAM.gov, the public tender database of United States on what falls under US DoD. If you have more than two years of experience in selling and some track record of selling abroad, whether it’s, you know, on occasional basis or active basis, we are happy to engage with you. 

– CCC offers ebooks, so knowledge products, whether it’s on G2G contracting, whether it’s more specific to our different contracting, Prime Contracting Program or International Prime Contracting program, or US DoD Prime Contracting Programs, we have some knowledge products that are more specific to some sectors if this is of interest to you. So we really have, you know, a lot of information to share and provide to help you succeed internationally. Our team includes myself and Jonathan McAuley and Matthew Lariviere, our senior export advisor. There’s two other additions to the team, Almaida, export advisor. And soon, we’ll have a new recruit that will be joining on December 2nd, Juliet Plo, as export advisor. If you would like to get in touch with us, please visit our webpage on the contact form. You can fill out, you know, any inquiry. 

– My team is responsible along with engaging with exporters across Canada and attending some trade shows domestically, we also manage the client contact center at CCC. So if you’re right on our contact form, it will then to our team, and we’ll be responding usually in a pretty quick turnaround. 

– “So, which Indo-Pacific countries to see is active on, and any advice how we can get started in working with in Indo-Pacific?” So we had some discussion with the Bappenas in Indonesia. We believe we could do business in Indonesia. We signed recently a G2G non-binding MOU on building a green airport. We have some engagement in the defense sector with Philippines. I mean, the Australia is a country we did some business. I think what is important is as you engage in the different countries in Indo-Pacific, always work closely with the embassy colleagues, trade commissioners at post, because the countries we can do business can vary significantly between the level of governments. I’ll give you an example. You know, if the central government, let’s say, Mongolia. Mongolia can run a tender or will run two RFP. If these aren’t unsuccessful, they can do source-source contract, but it is possible that a state on enterprise or a municipality, municipal government would have different ability than the provincial government or the central government. And that can vary significantly depending on the different level of authorities in the country and by country. So instead of determining if a country we can do business or not, because it varies significantly between level of authorities, if you say, “I have a solution for, you know, 911 dispatcher, you know, for the local authorities, for local government,” well, it could vary between countries. Some may be able to do G2G contracting, others not. 

– So as you, if you have any interest, happy to have a split call with you to explore that, as well as working with our trade commissioner colleagues at post and to explore what are the possibilities that would be a good fit to your solution. When you engage with post colleagues, I’d really encourage you to be as specific as possible. When we engage with them, we try really to be focused on what is exactly the government authority that are being targeted, which is solution. Obviously, it’s important for us to be able to qualify your business before we engage with your business. And really happy to walk you through these steps. It doesn’t take that long. My is responsible to do the preliminary due diligence. It takes around two weeks, but we’ll do it in the right order before we further engage with our missions abroad. And the team… I know the trade commissions are highly involved in trade missions with Nigel Neal that is championing trade missions for ministering. 

– So usually, when a trade mission occurs, the trade commissioners at post will be, you know, all hands on deck in helping exporters and developing a program. But trade mission is one of the many initiatives that are being done by the trade portfolio partners. If you go to trade events, for instance, and you walk the floor, if you look at exhibitors, if you see a government stakeholder exhibiting with a pavilion, you know, asking the people in the pavilion, you know, who is the authority opening up the pavilion, the chances that a minister may show up or be planning to open up the pavilion and, you know, spend some time with local exhibitors in the pavilion. So it could be an opportunity for you to explore or pull aside with the minister. The trade commissioners can help us, as well to facility introductions. If CCC has boots on the ground, you know, attend a trade event. 

– These are also some possibilities that we can explore. Important for us to be able to do it once we qualify the exporter with our service. Not too great expectation on the government authority. Last year, we… You know, so CCC is, you know, our niche is really supporting exporters selling to government buyers. We can also help supplying solutions to private sector buyers and non-for-profit buyers. An example in Australia was the… There was a cathedral who was looking to acquire, well, to refurbish an organ for $2 million. The contract was very straightforward. The cathedral asked for help in qualifying the exporter and was really keen in working with Canada to do it. So CCC facilitated a contract as prime contractor, a G2G contract. In this case, it was a G2B, but for $2 million. I say that, you know, obviously, for a contract of 10 millions, you know, we would expect a company to have revenues that are a bit larger than the contract. But we should not forget that a contract of 10 million could be a single transaction of a sale, or it could be a five-year contract. If you look for a five-year contract, let’s say 2 million per year, it’s quite accessible to some companies, SME companies. Not everyone, but still accessible. So, you know, if you look at a 2 million contract over three years, it’s less than a million per year. Obviously, for two million contract, because it mobilize a number of resources in house or legal resources or contract management or contract structuring resources, we have to be mindful about how much resource that we mobilize. 

– So if the contract is straightforward, we can look at it. If the contract is not straightforward, the chances are that we may not be able to support it. But, you know, my team was established to change that perception at CCC that we only work with high profile companies. We really work across the spectrum with all size of companies, and there’s some contracts that are all paid in advance with positive cash flow. These contracts are very straightforward, but obviously we want the company to be strong enough. If your company’s way too small but you have a great solution, there’s another way to work with CCC. If you identify a larger company that could act as a prime, as a subprime, we could qualify the subprime and you’ll be supplying to that company. That allow you to explore another way to do business with us and still be able to be successful in the marketplace and growing. And there are some companies that were having the active discussion to explore options. 

– I mean, there are many ways we can structure contracts at CCC. Obviously, you know, CCC needs to protect the government of Canada, so we need to look at mitigating risk as best as we can. So, a simple, straightforward contract is best for us than something overly complicated. But, you know, doing an airport like Ecuador with the municipality of Quito, was highly complex, but we’re able to do it. The nuclear reactor involved the Canada accounts with the Ministry of Finance in Canada because of some risk in the financing. It was also a highly complex, but we’re able to support it. So, we can do many different projects. Obviously, when we see a risk, we need to make sure that we find the right mitigation measures, both for us, for the government buyers and also the exporter. We wanna make sure the export is solid enough so that in end, the contract is a successful a contract and a win-win for everyone. 

– But I think that whatever projects you have, happy to have a discussion with you and take it from there. If it works, amazing. If it doesn’t work now, it may work in the future. But we may give you some tips and how to structure your project differently or what are the right information, you know, in market you should look at to potentially explore such opportunities. There’s some companies who knock at the door because they already signed a contract and there’s a performance bond required, and it’s too onerous for them. And we expose to what we can do. What are, you know, the advantage of working with us and what a potential constraint because of timelines. But, you know, some companies are very, very happy to find out what we can offer and take it from there. Sometime it works, sometime it doesn’t work. I mean, all the leads that we support does not bring a success. You know, one out of five projects may go through, but it varied greatly between, you know, on the sectors that we support and the complexity of projects. Sometime a government will wanna acquire a solution very, very quickly for a number of reasons. And if we have the right companies already, it goes very fast. 

– Sometime it will take longer. The government may require to consult with ministry of finance, ministry of public works, they may have to go to parliament. It really depends. So I don’t think it’s… I mean, it’s important for you to understand that we can work with companies of all sizes, but we have to be also realistic on the level of effort that’s gonna be involved. So if you’re already working with a government, so you will have a number of options available to you. Through your discussion with the government authority, if the government really likes your solution, the government either will wanna do an RFP but may get puzzled, because if they’re really interested in your solution and it really fulfill the needs that they they’re looking for, you’ve answered all the questions of their technical team, any engineers to be working on, it fulfills some of the, you know, the key parties of the government, then the government may prefer a direct contract. 

– Some government can give a source-source contract directly to your business or could turn to a another government to do it. Now, we play a similar role than the US FMS in the US, foreign military sales does government-to-government contracting, but requires congressional approval. When I speak in the defense sector to some defense attache, what you don’t know about CCC, I say we’re likely Canadian FMS. We’re different, but we do government-government contracting, but we don’t require congressional approval, we don’t require permit approval. Up on a certain threshold, it may require approval. But for most projects we do, we can proceed directly. And they’re quite happy to find out, you know, of what CCC can offer in the defense sector. Being a very lean organization, we can expedite contract very quickly. So if you’re already engaging with a government or with a federal government, then the choice will be yours to determine whether you would like to explore a potential G2G with the government authority you’re engaging with. And we’ll follow the lead with you. 

– We’ll work with our embassy colleagues who may have, you know, a level of ephemerality at some degree with the government authority and may suggest some options, and we’ll follow you a lead. If you would like to propose to explore potential G2G with the government, if we are able to qualify your business and be satisfied with it, once we complete our corporate due diligence, we can be introduced to the buyer with you or we could also have our basic colleagues speak on our behalf, send a letter of of interest to the government buyer to multiple approach that we can take in getting a signal check from the government authority on their appetite for G2G for your solution. There are some instances that government may not be keen, and then that means that you may have to wait until an RFI or the RFP comes out. But there’s some other instance you may believe that if the RFP comes out, some competitors may have more chances to win the transaction, and therefore looking at a G2G will be the best scenario. We work on cost recovery on that business line internationally. I did not mention during my presentation. That’s important to take note. But we’re very competitive in what we offer and very happy to explain further, you know, on a one-on-one call with your business. But if you believe that there’s a room to explore G2G, you know, you’re welcome to engage with me and my team. “Do we only work with federal government departments and agencies?” 

– So, for the US DoD, everything is done on solicitation basis. So if a ministry or a local authority put something on SAM.gov, that will be upon, you know, the tender and what’s available and the authority, you know, will be listed there. Internationally, we can work with any level of authority. You know, a port authority could engage with us because they want to build, do a port expansion or port modernization. It could be an airline who was looking at increasing their fleet, an airport authority who was trying to add, you know, lights or expand, you know, the tarmac or, you know, add fingerprinting capabilities or, you know, beef up their security measures. It could be a ministry of finance or, you know, a security force who’s looking at adding cybersecurity measures against potential threat or building, you know, capabilities. It could be the Navy is looking at increasing their combat management systems. 

– So we can really work with any level of government of authority, any level of authority in a country as long as the authority you’re targeting for your solution has the ability to do G2G contracts. CCC could participate in tenders, but because we need to complete their due diligence before the tender, the timelines will be very, very tight. And also we need to make sure that there’s added value for you to ask CCC to attend. Our niche is really to work outside of a competitive process, leveraging a source-source contract. So in terms of government of Canada, we sources to help with exports. So the trade temperature service provide four key services to exporter that qualifies to their service. 

– These service are free of charge to gain companies. They’ll prepare you for international markets, they’ll walk you through some… They provide you some tips, how to navigate some of the complexity in the market. They can provide you with qualified contacts of companies that are well known, local companies or local contacts are well known to the embassy in their market. They can help troubleshooting as well. And we work very closely with them because our objectives are pretty much aligned. We take party to a G2G contracting approach as a contracting party, as a prime contractor, which differs from the trade commissioners. 

– But the trade commissioner service will refer opportunities in market, will refer companies to us, and will work together in organizing preparation for trade missions, also attendance to trade shows, trade conferences. And there’s quite a significant number of trade conference that we attend. My team will do it more domestically, but we have another team at CCC would do it abroad, whether it’s the Paris Air Show, Farnborough Air Show, Dubai Air Show. There are many other trade shows, you know, across sectors that will be participating, and all the time the trade portfolio will try to work together to provide the best service we can to exporters. So CanExport. Providing funding is another program. If your solution are not ready yet for commercialization, and I see an RCI rep support to bring more innovation or support for an innovation to become ready for commercialization, their FCC colleagues as a Crown Corporation support as funding to support agribusiness exporters to export. Very, very active in the ag sector. We collaborate very well with them. 

– Industry Canada with their high growth program support companies with high growth potential to succeed as part of their growth plan, including with the export plan, and they’ve been very active in supporting trade missions as well. If you attend a trade mission and you come back with potential intelligence in market, discussion with buyers, level of interest, really interests you in connecting with us. If you have already some engagement and you’d like to test the water with us, you know, there’s no wrong approach. I mean, we are there to initiate a discussion with you. 

– So in terms of wrapping up, we’re at the end of our presentation today. I wanna thank you very much for attending this webinar. Again, we are there to help you in your trade journey. We have a number of resources and programs available to you, really encourage you to engage with us. There is no… You should not hesitate, and we’ll take it where you are and we’ll do our best to help you in your trade journey. And for those who will be attending the upcoming trade mission, all the best, you know, wish you great success in this trade mission, and the other ones that will be coming. Definitely Indo-Pacific, Asia Pacific as a whole represent significant opportunities, and we really hope you can see some opportunities and it’s gonna help you grow your business. So, thank you very much again and I look forward to reconnecting with you.