Canada's Pacific Gateway: 255,000 new jobs in BC alone

No markets on Earth offer more promise for growth in trade, investment and tourism than the new economic giants on the Pacific Rim. Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, India and the ASEAN countries offer incredible potential for British Columbia. We are Canada’s front door on the Asia Pacific. As Canada’s Asia Pacific Gateway we are also North America’s closest location to those burgeoning economies.

Not only are we geographically closer than our competitors, we are increasingly linked through families and relationships. More than one-quarter of British Columbia’s population identified itself as Asian in the most recent Canadian census. Over a quarter of all BC’s exports are to Asian countries. About a quarter of all Asian immigrants to Canada migrate to BC. BC now hosts almost half of all tourists from the Asia Pacific to Canada. A number of our schools have ESL populations that are 40 or 50 per cent of the entire student body.

By 2020, many experts predict that China’s economy will be larger than that of the United States. Today, China is BC’s second largest trading partner, after the USA, with $12 billion in bilateral trade last year. Japan is the second-largest economy in the world, and imports more than $5 billion worth of BC exports a year. Some experts now predict that India’s GDP per capita will quadruple by 2020, and its economy will surpass the United States by 2043. Korea is our fourth-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade levels of more than $3.7 billion in 2008. These are enormous opportunities for all of us.

We are blessed with a wealth of resources needed to power those countries’ economies into the future – clean energy, wood, metals, coal and human talent. We have the potential to generate an additional $76 billion in annual trade and 255,000 new jobs by 2020.

To seize that advantage, we will open up our ports, airports, rail and trucking corridors, to handle the growing volume of container shipping business that will be flowing between our two continents. We will expand the Port of Prince Rupert with phase two development and continue to enhance the Metro Vancouver Ports in our southern communities. Our international airports create enormous opportunities for trade, tourism and educational and cultural exchange.

Whether its Prince George or Comox, Cranbrook or Nanaimo, Vancouver or Abbotsford we can benefit with millions of dollars in economic growth, with a new national Open Skies policy that allows international air carriers direct flights between our cities and international markets. There are enormous economic and job benefits from Asia alone. We will harmonize our domestic trading and shipping regulations to expedite trade and lower shipping costs and add to our economy.

We must remain competitive to keep our economy strong and we have to send a message of stability to create investor confidence. We have lowered taxes and eliminated the Corporate Capital Tax that had alienated investment under the NDP. We are opening up international trade offices throughout the Pacific Rim. We are establishing new partnerships with key cities in China and throughout the Pacific Rim, including new international partnerships in education, health research, exchange programs, and more.

The new One World Scholarships are all directed at strengthening our ties with the international community. We are a small open trading economy and international relationships are our economy’s life blood. The largest single international promotion we will ever have the opportunity to capitalize on will be the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

For more information, check out: www.canadaspacificgateway.ca or www.gov.bc.ca/ecdev/down/asia_pacificinitiative_out.pdf.