We provide a presence in 12 regional offices staffed with fully competent personnel.
We also fund a socioeconomic ecosystem through our programming. The Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation, or CEDEC, is an example, as is the YES organization.
We also have community futures corporations, or CFs, which are scattered over the rural communities of Quebec and are also a spearhead for our presence in those communities. These organizations often work with very small businesses and put them in touch with us, Economic Development Canada, when their projects start growing and it is time for us to support them.
So we are not alone. I feel like people know us, and we regularly submit that with our partners. People submit pertinent cases to us.
It is also important for fulfilling our mandate that it be done in both official languages. It is important that the anglophone communities in Quebec be familiar with us just as the francophone communities in Quebec should. That is why it is important to invest in the ecosystems of both official language communities. The program for the official languages that we talked about earlier, and the $10.2‑million figure that we receive over a five-year period, help us to improve the services offered so that the anglophone communities in the various regions of Quebec are familiar with us and know that these programs are accessible and available. We cannot allow ourselves to miss out on a good business proposal in Quebec and in Canada.