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This article empirically investigates the role of import intermediaries in Canada and discusses how public policies can affect them. Among the main results is that intermediaries are shown to play a very different role with respect to manufacturers and retailers regarding differentiated and complex products, but their role is qualitatively the same across North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and non-NAFTA countries, and the share of intermediaries' imports is always boosted by a greater mass of small domestic manufacturers and retailers. These results suggest that import wholesalers play an important role in the Canadian economy, especially with respect to domestic manufacturers, and that policy-makers should be mindful of policy impacts on this sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We utilize an enhanced gravity model to estimate the effect of lagged immigration waves on Canadian imports and exports by province. Empirically, this model was tested using Canadian data on import and export flows to the top 40 countries of origin for Canadian immigrants based upon the composition of the most recent immigrant wave. The results are consistent with previous studies, where immigrants increased both import and export trade flows. By adding the provincial immigrant wave variable, it was also found that new immigrants affect imports almost immediately, whereas for exports, the immigrant effect is not significant for at least five years and may take as long as 20 years to reach full impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]