still. don't see don't come. now at five thirty pm here in the russian capital this is r.t. and here you headlines now. wait for ecuador to decide on his request for political asylum and within hours of the chances of him leaving the u.k. without being arrested remain on so. moscow is not sending its battleships to syria and hasn't changed his position on ways to solve the conflict according to russia's foreign minister in an exclusive interview with us here at od say. britain and the us may give immunity and the clemency to syria's president assad if he attends a conference on the transition of power all us part of the effort to oust the

syrian leader. and fighting continues in libya with over one hundred killed in a week of tribal clashes this as the interim government fails to end violence in the post could the. past time for our interview program spotlight and i'll go off looking at the future of russia canadian trade relations with the ongoing economic forum in st petersburg this is art. hello again and welcome to the spotlight i'll be your novel and today my guest on

the show is. back to the russian city of st peter's has been flooded with hundreds of first rank businessmen and politicians. they came back to attend the economic forum one of the most important events. among others a delegation from canada came from a country that's very much in common with russia and as one of the closest trade relations with. canada's international trade minister past is my guest on the show today and we will discuss the latest developments and the russia canada copyright. trade between russia and canada and began long before official relations were established it develops didn't live through the years but the last decade was the most efficient with canadian experts to russia increasing six fold last year russia canada trade was worth almost three billion dollars one of the main events where

russians and canadians business is the same it is broke economic all right. every deal struck there every year with ten billion dollars. the minister thank you very much for being with us good to be with you. the. trade between canada and russia last year was two point seven billion euro. is dollars worth of goods is it a lot more or is this still potential growth there's a lot of potential when you do you consider it's a lot to get given given the the size of the two countries i would say it's modest yes when you think of a country the size of russia and then the country the size of canada our trees should be more robust than that compared to some of our other much smaller trading partners we actually have larger trade volumes going both ways so there is

tremendous potential in the canada russia trade and investment partnership the russia canada into governmental economic commission which you are a member of has been working for quite a while already so how does it prove in effect what are the main problems that you are dealing with in that commission well one of the challenges is to simply improve our bilateral trade and investment. i believe the i.c.c. has actually acknowledged that our trade levels are not what they should be our countries obviously are very similar in many respects we are incredibly rich in natural resources and certainly canada has developed some real technological expertise in mining oil and gas exploration of course russia is not far behind but there's so many areas where we can collaborate and really leverage the kinds of investments we're making in research and development to ensure that our economies surprise spring in the long term well you said you you so took them out of the

areas on the investment problem vestment what are these areas can you name them the areas in which canadian business is out ready to to to to please do science in this thing well let me start with a few of course mining i already mentioned or oil and gas but there's also the area of aerospace canada is one of the world's aerospace leaders bombard. the flagship canadian company which has sold its aircraft into. the russian market the area of transportation. the area of construction and building canada is a leader in that even in infrastructure and recreational buildings there are many different areas where canada has very specific expertise actually benefit russia and i brought along with me a trade mission of some thirty different companies who are very interested in the russian market and they're connecting with some potential russian partners here and hopefully that will bring bring some fruit to our relationship know what about

skulk of the what's called is one of the favorite projects of the russian government today how active are the canadian and to printers in trying to take part in this call of a project how it's left of is this project for canadians i think i would say our interest is in its infancy right now i do know that my embassy officials. are in touch with skolkovo trying to establish what kinds of collaboration can take place i do not skulk ovo does have a number of areas of key interest such as nanotechnology biomedicine is another one and it's my understanding that a number of the skolkovo clusters are going to be visiting canada this summer to explore where we can collaborate in these areas well i ask because because this technological. and industrial modernization is the key phrase for russian

politicians recently do you think that the canadians develop can bring more and more innovation into in into russia industry absolutely and of course we can benefit benefit from russian innovation as well. canada is a world leader in science and technology in research and innovation and as you probably know last year we signed a memorandum of understanding them science and technology. we're presently negotiating a space cooperation agreement these are examples of how we're stablish in framework within which the canada russia. relationship will go forward into the future so we're very interested to see what's happening it's called cowboy and look forward to being a significant part of it what kind of companies participating in your trade mission you you mentioned that this is a pretty pretty large mission but had to moscow what were the criteria for you to choose the people that would accompany they have to fall into these key sectors

that we're focusing in on this trade mission and i mentioned some of those earlier aerospace was one of them transportation. construction and building products engineering construction. those are the areas that we focused on now my colleague who is the. agriculture minister for canada jerry ritz has of course been here in russia i believe at least three times in the last two years i believe he's been here a total five times expanding our agricultural collaboration canada exports a lot of agricultural products and agriculture expertise to russia we're hoping to build on that as well but our mission is focused on the areas that i've just noted your mission is not only visiting moscow but it's visiting a couple of other regions resample even really been to cousin the capital of the russian taught her if you also are planning to do to visit volgograd which many

call the capital isle the south of russia so what. are you trying to do to promote the corporation on the regional level canadian provinces directly with the russian regions this is starting to happen it is starting to happen there are two of our provinces that have spade paid special interest to russia those provinces are alberta as well as quebec and they found there to be a real opportunity to deal with. regions even our ambassador john sloan has visited old there's a good handful of regions in which canada has expressed interest because. russia is it's such a rich country there are so many opportunities there and the way forward i believe is going to be strategic partnerships in the key industry sectors when the provinces start to deal directly with the regions some of the country the new

russia and start doing business together do you find you as a minister do you find yourself in the situation when you when you don't control what's going on and may not even know what's going on in in the economic relations between it between the the the pot as well and i have is that just well first of all i don't assume that is the situation we have a very close collaboration between the federal government or ten provinces in our three territories and typically when they embark upon trade missions abroad would be let us know they reported they don't report to be collaborate with them so you have enough bureaucracy to keep an eye on what's going on just like any government in our bureaucracies but i can tell you we have a strong federation where there's a high level of collaboration between the provincial level of government and the federal level of government so when alberta and back both very significant provinces in our federation decide that they're going to establish relationships

with some of the russian regions we typically know that they're in kucha was with our embassy staff are in boston or john sloan here in russia you know the physic did cross know you were more months. but of all stock market. piver these are all areas where we're starting to pay special interest to because they do represent opportunities for enhanced canadian try. an investment gauge for well why . crissy is that i always thought that the whole idea behind behind this this regional level competition was to get rid of the proceeds to facilitate this business like we saw what we do and we don't care about about what the government has to say. but you say you say that the brokers the still there well first we have your ocracy in canada i challenge you to you to find one government is the world that doesn't have some level of bureaucracy i think the point i was making was that

not only at the bureaucratic level going to the political level there's a very close working relationship between our federal government and the provincial and territorial governments in the city of cars and you would trade ministers from the twenty one member asia pacific economic cooperation block right what were the main issues you discussed. but one of the main issues and an area that canada has championed is the fight against protectionism trade protectionism we believe that protectionism is toxic to the global economic recovery we believe the way forward for the world's economies is to remove trade barriers rather than raising new ones but another area that was of keen interest which we're very pleased that russia put on the agenda as you know russia was the chair of the meetings and comes on and we're very pleased to see them put environmental goods and the trade environmental goods on the agenda and russia was

a leader in promoting the removal of tariffs on our mental goods to encourage the world's economies to become more environmentally sustainable and canada was very pleased to support russia's russia's efforts in that regard says edward fast international trade minister can a spotlight be back shortly after we take a break so stay with us we'll be back with this interview him.

sigrid laboratory mccurdy was able to build a new its most sophisticated robot which all unfortunately doesn't give a darn about anything turns mission to teach creation why it should care about human to end. this is why you should care watch only on the algae dot com. welcome back to spotlight i'm older now than just a reminder that my guest on the show today is edward fast international trade minister of canada. boosting international trade is what the st petersburg economic forum has been successfully doing for sixteen years it was given and you impetus in two thousand and five when it was first attended by the russian president vladimir putin support for the event instantly raised its status the forum has been dubbed

the russian davos with world leaders becoming frequent guests there then grew from strength to strength until two thousand and nine when it was overshadowed by the global credit crunch last year's forum demonstrated signs of recovery with fifty investment deals signed with around seven billion dollars but still it's only about a third of the pre-crisis amount overcoming the global downturn is once again topping the forms agenda for in guests will be able to he members of the new russian government talk about he can only create forms in the vacation. ways to attract investment into the russian economy. took the international st petersburg forum is being held these days well how active is canada and in this event in the form well we're probably not as active as we'd like to be and why what i think and i think her part of it is the distance

between canada and russia i don't know exactly why that is what i can tell you i've had some discussions with my counterparts here in russia as well as some of the business community and we're already making plans to perhaps be engaged in a much higher level next year it's very important for khanna to be present in russia and i think all of us have shared a concern that given the great potential there is in the canada russia trade relationship that we really haven't exploited that relationship enough and i have sensed on the russian side as well that my counterparts the ministers i've met with really have shown a willingness to deepen that relationship so i think the future is going to be very exciting for us and my commitment is to make sure that we plan for next years st petersburg for him to make it a real significant presence for canadian companies here you're phrase about as

being far away from each of the meet me smile because actually russian kind of all pretty close on the globe but i know why you said that because we used to have a major economic partner just across the niagara river is this correct anything else is very far away. and i think that's a rancher heading north you know i think probably the closest point by land. there's nobody that flies on your reaction well listen do international economic forums like this one the same or others all of the really useful i mean in business terms do do they really help people make money or it's more just like a festival i mean for business people i think it depends on whether. the focus of the agenda is is right if the agenda of those kinds of fora actually focuses on issues that matter to companies and issues that are going to help them actually penetrate new markets for trade and investment then they're going to be successful certainly the apec summit we had which didn't have

a primary focus on companies was i believe successful in that we made some progress in removing trade barriers between countries but there's so much more we can do and i'm going to be encouraging our canadian companies to take a greater interest in the canada russia relationship well you mentioned political will you mentioned political readiness in the two kinds will of course political will it may boost bilateral relations including trade relations but the political relationship between canada and russia hasn't been very active lately so so does that create a problem for business or not. i would say it's always in the business is best interests for the political players in both countries to be engage at a much higher level i should mention that in two thousand and seven our government in canada and opted what we call a global commerce strategy and that global commerce strategy actually has identified russia as one of our priority markets i have the honor and privilege

actually of being able to really ramp up that engagement with russia as i mentioned the beginning of the show i don't believe our potential has been realized in fact we're not anywhere close we've barely scratched our potential and that's why it's important not just our trade is modest our investment relationship is growth to the bottom what we do have some very big companies involved in care in russia for example kinross gold i believe is the largest foreign investor in the mining industry in russia and we're very pleased with that we're proud of that but we can certainly leverage that into my something much greater. i have always been very much interested in doing is between russia and canada not only because ice hockey but for other reasons pleading first but recently. it crossed my mind that canada has been pretty much suspicious about russian intentions in the

arctic so can you tell me how can you say that the countries are doing something to get rid of these suspicions to to some of the border of the maritime borders well as you know issues relating to maritime borders and and some of the under sea beds that have to be adjudicated those those can be resolved at the international level in typically are and i'm confident that with both parties bringing a high level of engagement and goodwill to the table we'll resolve those issues. but more importantly as you know both russia and canada are members of the arctic council and in fact next year canada will be the chair of the arctic council and we look forward to two collaborating with russia at the council level because we have a number of issues where we actually have common cause and i like to focus on the areas that we have in common the areas where we can collaborate to strengthen our

mutual relationship so again i don't see i'm not a pessimist i'm certainly optimistic that these kinds of issues will be resolved amicably the way well common cause i think it's the key phrase because because like the joint explorations of the riches of the arctic for example may be a good way to overcome these suspicions and these misunderstandings so so is this on the agenda of russian canadian. negotiations to to to start to see this and join french and ventures in the region well you've put your finger on it because both of our countries are the richest countries in the world when it comes to natural resources clearly it's in our best interests to collaborate with the really you know it when you talk about natural resources in total when you add oil and gas to the mining water you're absolutely right when you take all the resources of the first century when you take the basket of resources there are no countries in the

world that are are as rich as canada and russia and that's why it's important that we collaborate and it's one of the reasons why i'm encouraging my russian contra purport parts to move forward with modernizing our foreign investment protection and promotion agreement this is an agreement they can really provide confidence to business sectors and both of our countries to invest in each other's economies and i'm hopeful that we'll be able to make some progress in that regard going on i made a series of interviews with chinese officials businessmen there when i went to ask them about are you really. going to take over the world and stuff they said no no we're just going to sit and wait because we're a risk we just have to wait and their advice to russia i think to canada to being so rich in natural resources just to learn from the chinese just to wait. because china is knocking and canada's door for some of our resources in there and

in fact our our exports to china increased twenty seven percent last year so that indicates that they do have an interest in our resource and would of course have an interest in russia's resources so goes back to the whole issue of collaboration clearly we have so much to gain by working together on these many issues that are going to drive our future prosperity in the maritime question how could canada and russia and this is it was a big issue in russian press couple of weeks ago copper eight in the development of the arctic maritime routes between the atlantic and the pacific oceans where they tend to see each other rather as competitors in this area i'm not sure that it's all about competition anymore you know in the old days country saw each other as competitors in the various industries whether it's shipping whether it's resource extraction whether it's the sale of goods and services abroad. today we live in a world of global supply chains where we have companies in many different countries

collaborating with in complex sophisticated twenty first century supply chains and so the whole paradigm has changed to where the emphasis has to be as much on partnership as it is on competition with each other and we're seeing that more and more certainly canada is committed to doing that we're committed to helping our businesses plug into these international supply chains so that we can drive prosperity at home and of course help drive prosperity in countries like russia do you think that's canadian companies would be interested in taking a bid for the dissipation of oil and gas exploration in russia. absolutely. of course when i go back to canada i try to encourage canadian companies to look to russia as a good place to invest obviously they still have to do their due diligence exercise caution because in any market there are going to be unique business environments

unique legislative circumstances a unique regulatory framework that businesses have to navigate but that same time certainly from my visit to russia this time around i'm coming back with a very positive impression of what we can do as canadian businesses to engage with partners in russia even though there is there are example examples of successful it's front by foreign companies to to to put their hands on this in the russian old russian book oil riches you know what i. obviously there are significant differences in how we approach our oil and gas exploration in our respective countries in canada virtually all of the oil and gas exploration and development is done by the private sector. the federal government takes very little role in doing that other than supporting businesses. in russia of course the context is somewhat different. government takes a very significant role not only controlling those resources but in developing them

and exploring them so i suppose for the canadian companies the challenge is how do you navigate the unique circumstances of the russian oil and gas industry and how it's developed and we're still learning but as we move along but i'm optimistic that as time goes by more and more canadian companies will take an interest in that sector in russia but you might have noticed that when you were already here in russia with your visit that prime minister medvedev came up with the. pretty extensive program of privatization you know he proposed privatization in all of the gas sector in the banking sector so so. that should be a step in the direction you know what that's a very very positive signal you know there have been some other positive signals as well i met with russia's natural resources minister yesterday and he updated me on some of the regulatory and legislative changes that the russian government is

undertaking in the area of subsoil some regulations in the area of opening up the resource sector to more foreign investment those are really sending a clear signals to countries such as canada that we should be interested in investing in russia and thank you very much and just in mind that my guest today was edward fast international trade minister off canned and that's it for now from all of us here spotlight will be back with more until then stay on r.t. and take care. thank you jake.

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