The Export Development Corporation's mandate is to support and develop Canada's export trade. The Corporation was established in 1944, became a Crown corporation in 1969, and had its mandate broadened and its powers expanded in 1993 to better serve the need of Canadian exporters.

Surveying 136 exporting firms from ten OECD and non-OECD countries, this study documents the incidence, and impact of, non-tariff measures that are perceived to act as barriers to trade in seven sectors of environmental goods and associated services. Although the DDA has a mandate to address inter alia such trade barriers, information shedding light on the specific problems that firms encounter in their export activities has been scarce.

Accounts by exporting firms in Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea and the United States suggest that environmental goods indeed face a variety of obstacles when traded abroad. Firms participating in the survey mentioned relatively often problems associated with product testing and certification requirements, customs procedures, regulations on payment, problems with intellectual property protection, government procurement procedures and technical regulations and standards. Certain types of reported barriers appear to be more prevalent in certain markets. For example, customs procedures reportedly pose a problem predominantly in developing and transition economies and problems with intellectual property rights are associated especially with China. The non-tariff barriers reported by the firms appear to be generic and not specific to the environmental sector. The study shows that in many countries the environmental industry consists mostly of SMEs, for whom cost-raising barriers pose disproportionately greater problems due to their limited resources.

Overview of Canadian Environmental Industry including regional breakdowns, export statistics.

A review of the Canadian environmental and water industries. THE CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL INDUSTRY HAS BEEN RECOGNIZED AS A SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTOR TO THE CANADIAN ECONOMY for some time. Since the early 90s regional environmental industry trade associations have advocated business climates conducive to growth; provincial, territorial and federal government agencies, including Industry Canada, Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Infrastructure Canada and Statistics Canada, have had programs dedicated to the environmental industry. And thousands of companies, large and small, operating in the Canadian environmental industry, have made Canada an example of progressive environmental policy and a thriving environmental industry.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) conducts policy and research work on environmentally preferable goods and services (EPGS) in eleven different activities. One specific activity is to “Identify changes/trends in trade in green goods and services in the NAFTA region.” Lacking any definitive quantification of trade in EPGS, and also lacking any established or consistently used industry codes that result in ongoing government statistics on environmental trade, in 2003 CEC commissioned a study to provide a definition and quantification of trade in EPGS in the NAFTA region. CEC selected Environmental Business International Inc. (EBI), a market research firm dedicated to the environmental industry since 1988, to conduct this research and present a quantification of environmental trade in the NAFTA region.