Government Operations committee  Yes, I would say that's correct. I'm not so sure it's because of the work of OSME but it's more to do with some of the policies that have been building within the Department of Public Works in terms of taking small contracts and building them into larger contracts, making them more inaccessible to smaller companies.

Government Operations committee  Honestly, I have to say that in a survey we did in 2008, I don't think one comment talked about the OSME. I don't think there was one comment in that entire survey that mentioned the OSME—

Government Operations committee  —so I would say no, they're probably not doing that aspect of it very well.

Government Operations committee  I think that, one, they don't know about it. It's only in the large centres. Again, it exists in six large centres and not in any other part of the country, so when you talk about smaller communities or rural businesses, it's not something they would ever think about. Certainly we try to refer members to them if they have specific questions that it may be able to help them with, but I think you're absolutely right, I don't think it's very well known at all.

Government Operations committee  The frustrations are with the procurement process overall, not so much specifically with OSME. The fact is, they cannot find contracts. When they do find the contracts, MERX can be very difficult to navigate and very expensive to use. When they do find the contracts, the paperwork is huge.

Government Operations committee  It's difficult to say. The last time we did survey research on procurement was in 1995. I tried to compare the two, and they're not directly comparable; however, in 1995 we found around 40% of SMEs at that point--though it was a more targeted survey--were actually selling to the federal government.

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely, and I think the most valuable part of the information that we collect is the comments. We actually go back to our members and ask them more details about them. There's no doubt about it, when you go through the comments, there seems to be frustration, and I think there are a lot of businesses out there that have just given up.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for accommodating me so I could have the opportunity to present to you today on small and medium-sized businesses' access to procurement at the federal government level. You should each have a copy of a slide deck, which I will walk through as we go through the presentation.

Human Resources committee  Again, we're still analyzing a lot of this data, but part of the answer to that is that they're not well publicized, so they don't necessarily know about these programs. Many of them are programs that maybe their employees know about, but it's good for them to know about them as well, because they can perhaps let their employees know--when things happen where they have to let them go, for whatever the case may be--that these programs exist.

Human Resources committee  The other thing we were referring to on the training side was a program that we modelled after something called the “new hire program”. It was introduced in the late 1990s, and it gave employers an EI holiday when they hired young people. It encouraged employers to hire youth. It was very successful.

Human Resources committee  Can I also mention that in 1996 our labour market was in a very different place. Our unemployment rate was much higher. We didn't have the shortages we see today. The programs and the benefits that were set up at the time reflected the needs at that time. We need to now rethink where we are today and where we're going in the future, knowing the aging demographics that are facing us.

Human Resources committee  We're still analyzing the data, and one of the things we do want to look at is the rural-urban split, because all our business members are in rural as well as in urban settings. So we'll be able to look at whether you can find that in a rural setting as well.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This is his time and he can use it any way he likes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would actually argue that they are training. They're training more and more. Too often, though, only formal types of training are recognized when we look at the data. We know that in smaller companies informal training is as important, and in fact it's even more important, and can be just as effective in training people into positions.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We're actually about to embark on our own survey that is going to try to do that. Because we do get frustrated with this image or this myth that small businesses don't train. In fact they do, and they do it in droves. What's really frustrating is that so many of them train people and put them into a position, and then those people get picked off by a larger company or by governments.