In his opening address to the meeting of the Canada-Russia Business Council, Mr Zubkov said, in part:

Two years have passed since our previous meeting in Moscow. These two years saw major global economic changes, in particular, a dramatic slump in international trade due to the world economic and financial downturn. It also hit the Russian and Canadian economies. However, our two countries consistently implemented comprehensive anti-crisis programmes, and are successfully recovering from the crisis, as we saw at the end of 2010 and the beginning of this year.

Our countries' leaders are stepping up their bilateral and multilateral contacts to create beneficial conditions for the sustainable progress of our trade and economic cooperation. Indicatively, Russian-Canadian trade rose back to its pre-crisis level of $2.6 billion last year, and the trend remains positive. The first quarter saw a 31% rise against the same period last year.

Even despite these encouraging facts, Russian-Canadian trade still accounts for a token 0.3% of our countries' overall foreign trade. We have a huge potential to implement in trade, mutual investment and other forms of economic partnership.

Oil and petrochemical products account for more than 80% of Russian exports to Canada. Synthetic rubber, mineral fertilisers and other inorganic chemical products, alongside steel and nonferrous metals, also make a considerable part. Reciprocally, machinery, industrial equipment, transport vehicles, and chemicals make up more than 50% of Canadian exports to Russia. Agricultural exports are steadily increasing.

I think we should diversify our mutual trade, and more actively involve our regions in it. Several Russian regions and Canadian provinces have already signed trade agreements and protocols, and it is up to our two countries' business communities to promote such trade and make sure these documents are effective.

As for mutual investment, we have every reason to say that we have increasing opportunities for numerous joint ventures in the most diverse fields, especially those implying mutually compatible economic conditions and based in areas with similar climates.

To improve the investment climate and attract foreign experts and investors to the Russian market the government is liberalising legislation and simplifying legal procedures.

Particularly, Federal Law No. 86, of May 19, 2010, greatly improves the terms on which top foreign experts can come to Russia on long-term contracts. In 2010, the government commission on foreign investment for the first time authorised an overseas company to buy 100% strategic assets in Russia. It was a Canadian company.

Russia is intensifying its investment in the Canadian economy. Severstal Gold, a gold-mining arm of Severstal, Russia's largest steel manufacturer, increased its share in Canada's High River Gold Mines Ltd to 72.6%, while Atomredmetzoloto acquired control stock of Uranium One. In April 2011 Rosselkhozbank resumed loans for purchasing imported farm machinery to satisfy the request of Canadian and other businesses.

As in the past, the prospects of Russian-Canadian investment cooperation will be largely determined by active and new projects in the main areas of this cooperation – mining, the steel and engineering industries, and agriculture.

The opening of Canadian-based Magna's car part factories in St Petersburg and the Kaluga Region was a landmark in the auto industry. Agricultural cooperation has become so versatile that an entire forum devoted to livestock farming, just one of the many agribusiness sectors, will take place these days in Ottawa.

Many Russian-Canadian projects launched or being designed in these and other industries allow us to expect that bilateral investment cooperation will gain momentum and involve an increasing number of new fields and dynamically promote innovation. The first steps have been made in nanotechnology, telecommunications, information and space-related technology.

RUSNANO received nine applications for joint Russian-Canadian projects. One, which the RUSNANO board approved in March, envisages RUSNANO participation in Pangaea Ventures Fund III, whose specific capital amounts to $185 million, of which RUSNANO'S share will be up to $63.5 million.

RUSNANO and VentureLink Funds signed a memorandum of understanding in September 2010 to establish in Canada a venture fund of $200 million for the development of new materials and their manufacture, based on nanotechnology.

Business missions are a new and effective tool of cooperation in investment and innovation. A Russian business mission visited the Montreal and Quebec City science parks in March with the assistance of the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade in Quebec. The visit contributed to the preparation of the 8th meeting of the Intergovernmental Economic Commission, for which I would like to thank the Quebec government.

The design and construction of sports venues in Sochi, Kazan, St Petersburg, Moscow and elsewhere offer good prospects for partnership, which has brought tangible results already. This theme will be developed today as the Russian delegation includes persons responsible for the preparation of the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Our countries' opportunities for versatile cooperation in the Arctic and other northern areas deserve special mention. Among its foremost goals are guarantees of sustainable economic development, transport infrastructure development, and socio-economic wellbeing of the northern indigenous population. The northern Russian regions and Canadian provinces have begun to jointly prepare projects for the development of Arctic sea routes and cross-polar air routes. These activities also deserve special mention and every support.

I am sure that today's work of the Canada-Russia Business Council will dramatically enhance the interest of our countries' business communities in each other's markets, and promote mutually beneficial trade and investment cooperation between Russia and Canada.

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During his visit to Canada, First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov took part in the Canada-Russia Livestock Forum, during which he said, in part:

I am pleased to say that the meeting of the Canada-Russia Livestock Forum, about which I agreed with Minister of Agriculture Gerry Ritz about a year ago, is opening in the Canadian capital on the eve of the 8th meeting of the Canada-Russia Intergovernmental Economic Commission.

This is the first meeting in its kind in the history of our economic contacts. I hope the forum will make an effective platform for establishing new links and enhancing long-term agro-industrial cooperation between Russia and Canada.

Bilateral agribusiness cooperation traditionally appears on the agenda of the Intergovernmental Economic Commission, which testifies to the importance of agriculture for both countries' economic development.

In 2012, Russia will assume presidency of the APEC forum. Smooth food trade is among the themes that directly concern the entire range of APEC countries' economic interests. Justifiably, food security has been receiving increased attention and food price hikes in the APEC countries cause widespread alarm. These are formidable challenges, especially to the lowest-income population of the Asia-Pacific Region.

I am confident that we are all interested in finding solutions to those problems and forming a sustainable food market. Russia counts on close cooperation with Canada, a major player in the world food and farm equipment market.

I want to highlight the successful role of the Canada-Russia agricultural working group, operating within the Intergovernmental Economic Commission. It tackles practical issues of developing bilateral agro-industrial business partnership. We are glad to see that the first of today's meetings concerns further enhancement of cooperation in pedigree stock breeding with the use of state-of-the-art technology. I would like to confirm that pedigree stock breeding remains among top priorities of Russian-Canadian cooperation. However, we intend not only to go on purchasing pedigree animals from Canadian farmers but also to draw on their extensive experience and engage in joint innovation R&D.

We regard the enhancement of business contacts between the interested Russian regions and Canadian provinces on comprehensive joint projects as a principal vehicle of such cooperation. A graphic example is provided by an investment project to organise beef production in the Tver Region with the use of Canadian technology.

Worth mentioning among the other promising agro-industrial trends is cooperation in crop farming, including the latest methods of grain storage and shipment; potato growing on the basis of zoning and the introduction of high-yielding Canadian varieties in Russia; and space-based monitoring of crops, soil humidity gauging and yield forecasts.

On the whole, Canadian and Russian companies have a wide range of practical opportunities for mutually beneficial agro-industrial cooperation. I hope that today's forum will help you to discover other promising fields in which the experience of our countries' farms and companies can be used.

We think that the use of innovation energy and resource saving technology is highly topical as it responds to the sophisticated demands of the world economy. Considering the opinions of Russian and Canadian business communities on this theme, we would like to propose it as a key item for the agenda of the second Canada-Russia Agribusiness Forum, which we intend to host in one of the Russian regions in autumn 2012.

I wish the forum participants interesting creative work, close and lasting contacts and every success in the development of Canadian-Russian business contacts in agriculture.