Last year the United State exported more than $280 billion in trade with Canada and imported more than $316 billion.
Maybe some more of that pie can be sliced off for southern New Mexico.
Jeffrey Gray, trade commissioner for the General Consulate of Canada's Los Angeles office, was is in Las Cruces for three days last week to tour White Sands Test Facility, White Sands Missile Range Business Development Office and other locations. His officer overseas the country's business interest in the southwest. He said Canadian companies are interested in the unmanned aerial vehicle programs in the area as well as the aerospace industry at large.
"This trip is really fact finding for me," Gray said.
Representatives of Canada's trade office in Phoenix were also in Albuquerque last week.
"Our main focus is to bring Canadians into the marketplace, bring locals up to Canada and look for opportunities for people to meet and do business," Gray said. "We want to attract investment up north and help Canadians who are interested in investing in United States Southwest."
"Canada is getting known (for its) unmanned vehicle system industry," Gray said. "In Alberta there's a group called Canadian Center for Unmanned Vehicle Systems
and they have ... a lot of UAV testing going on."Gray said he uses a lot of his time looking after the aerospace, defense and security areas on behalf of Canadian industry and the Canadian government. That made the Las Cruces area with WSMR, the NASA presence and Spaceport America an obvious place to visit.
The Canadian aerospace industry sports about 400 companies with approximately 83,000 employees, $22.2 billion in revenues with an output ranked fifth in the world, Gray said.
That contrasts to the $76.5 billion in business the U.S. industry reported in the first half of last year alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Still, Canada has consistently been one of the top suppliers for U.S. companies as well as one of the top foreign markets for U.S. aerospace products and services.
"One of the sectors (Canada) is looking at too is bio mass," said Eric Montgomery, MVEDA's business development manager.
The work of Sapphire Energy in Las Cruces and Columbus, as well as research at New Mexico State University, in the efforts to produce fuel from algae, also attracted Gray to the area.
"(Interest) is mainly how it relates to aviation jet fuel, or aviation fuels generally," Gray said. "There might be some upcoming synergy between what research organizations in universities and government labs are doing in the United States and what we're doing up in Canada in the bio fuels area."
While most look south when talk turns here to an international border, the one 1,500 or so miles north can also bring an economic bump to southern New Mexico.
"A lot of times we talk about Mexico as our major international opportunity and it certainly is, but Canada plays a role in what we do," Montgomery said. "We've had conversations with a variety of different companies who get raw materials from Canada. They are shipped down to processing facilities in Mexico and then they bring them back to the United States through The Santa Teresa port of entry for their distribution throughout the country."
Gray said Canadian industry does not have a presence in southern New Mexico, but that could change, as other southern border areas have attracted such investment.
"Obviously, in Arizona and California there has been great interest," he said.
Brook Stockberger can be reached at (575) 541-5457
