Yes, certainly. I'll try to summarize this time.
First of all, the agency got started in August 2009, halfway through the fiscal year. We took it upon ourselves to look for partnering opportunities with agencies that had a history of doing very well: the industrial research assistance program, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, and the SMART program, just to name a few.
We knew at that time it was imperative to get assistance into these communities around southern Ontario. Very quickly, we looked for partners that had connections and existing relationships, but we also went on the road and did consultations with communities, with economists, and with planners in these little communities around southern Ontario. We collected all this data. That is where we came up with companies and communities saying that they only had one employer and needed to diversify so that they would have three or four employers, or that they needed venture capital and infrastructure, or that they had scientists who didn't know how to run a business but had great ideas.
We developed a series of programs, as I mentioned earlier, that we called the southern Ontario advantage. They were to try to approach these gaps, but I will tell you that the criteria changed, so that it wasn't so much just simply getting money into the community. We continually upped the game to require a longer term economic benefit to the community.
Today, our programs are based on diversification of communities by trying to get to the communities and educate them about these programs being available. We can't fund anything if we don't have an application. That has been a bit of a challenge.
On the venture capital side, we've leveraged some $147 million with 81 high-growth start-up companies, and with 2,400 high-quality jobs created there. The money is repayable. This is a very important thing. We've had folks like Dr. Oetker, which was looking all over North America. It's a German company. We ended up landing that company in southern Ontario, again for a repayable loan, whereas other countries, as you can imagine, are offering some significant grants, but the overall tax base I think has been attracting them because it's so low.
For one example here, I'll go back to the research commercialization initiative. Eighty-five per cent of the people in that program indicated that their projects met or exceeded most of their original objectives. Fifty per cent indicated that as a result of the ARC program, applied research and commercialization, they are expecting sales increases greater than 75%.
Another one is the partnership with Canada in which the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters are projecting that for the funding we've delivered to them, they've leveraged up to $95 million while assisting 800 southern Ontario manufacturing businesses. Their objective is to increase their productivity and their competitiveness on a global scale. Also, they have created some 5,000 jobs.
I could continue with this. Chango is another one I remember, whose sales increased over 500% as a result of working with students under our FedDev programs. In the next year they're predicting an increase of over 800% on that number.
I think we are looking at the opportunity here to shift the environment, not just to create jobs, but to create high-quality jobs in a new economy. Obviously, this is what other folks think, hence the agreement to renew the project. What we need now, obviously, is that it has to pass; we need to have the budget pass.
