Great piece. I hope that Canada can win in the services sector going forward.  It makes good sense.

But, here is an anecdote from personal experience.  In 2014 when I was running one of Canada's largest alternative asset managers I was invited to Kazakhstan to be interviewed about managing money for the central bank.  Using all our connections and a large well known law firm we tried to determine if we were able to do business with such a dictatorship.  Through a friend at the Attorney General of Ontario, the best we could muster was we could sell them auto parts!

In the end we went, but did not win the business.  There are a myriad of reasons, but one was that the Canadian government (at all levels) does nothing to help this kind of exports.  Others, like the US and UK, work hard to support international asset management sales.  Canada has a lot to offer and we should work to put our back into supporting these and other high value service exports.