Mr. Chisu, that's a very good question, and I think my response will demonstrate that these strategic considerations are very, very much at the forefront of what we're considering as we move forward.
You spoke at the beginning of your question about some of our priorities, and I can address that. I can also speak to some of the specific things we will be doing to leverage the opportunity that lies before us. You're right, in that although there remain elements of it to be confirmed, now is the time for us to get ready for what will emerge as an enormous economic opportunity.
First, I will discuss some strategic priorities we consider that help us to address an opportunity of this magnitude. The creation and sustainability of entrepreneurial communities is a fundamentally important aspect of what we do to encourage innovation. There's business development support to small and medium enterprises, and this, perhaps, addresses some of the questions of preparedness and being able to be agile and nimble in an economy that requires this kind of ability. There's connecting people to jobs, addressing employability barriers, and promoting labour force opportunities. These would be some of our key priorities as we look forward strategically.
Some of those things we are doing as we speak. I say so with great pride, recognizing that there's a representative from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Mrs. Suzanne Tannouri, behind me, who I saw walk into the room earlier, and we're grateful to have her here. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade does a phenomenal job on an annual basis of meeting with official language minority communities. Just before the new year, in late December, my colleague Jean Léger, representatives from FCFA, representatives from Quebec Community Groups Network, and representatives from some universities had an opportunity to sit down with deputy ministers and others in a dialogue consultation. This was a key aspect of what we wanted to talk about: what can we do now to work with entrepreneurs to help us get there? The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has already opened up its capacity to talk with us about what we need to be working on.
With the resources we have—and this talks to the operations and the value of everyone who has a presence across the country, and we work directly with more than 1,000 small and medium businesses, as I mentioned in my testimony—we will be offering things like webinars to talk with people about what's emerging in terms of opportunity. We'll be offering consultation services that will enable people to figure out what some of the regulatory considerations are that they might need to consider to export, and all of these types of things, and to attract human resources to be able to do what they do.
I do respect everyone's time, and I don't want to go on too long. Something I mentioned in my testimony a little bit earlier, and it's a game changer and I encourage the committee to look at it, is the report in which we talked about bilingualism, trade, and Canada. This talks to the economic impact of our nation being able to work in a bilingual capacity when it comes to other economies. For example, I will use a reference that economists sometimes use, and Mr. Williamson might be able to help us understand it more clearly. It's called a gravity model. The Conference Board of Canada prepared this report for both RDÉE Canada and for CEDEC, and it speaks to our economic opportunity. I say it's a game changer because I really do think that in the global economy we are working in now, we need to look at the official language minority communities as engines for economic opportunity. The report I've referred to conveys it very clearly.
