Status of Women committee  I have to respond in English.

Status of Women committee  In terms of what BDC offers, BDC does not offer financing for child care or that type of thing. Our financing is related to business needs only, for things such as working capital or the purchasing of equipment and those types of things.

Status of Women committee  I don't believe it's written down that our mandate is to help women entrepreneurs. Our mission is to provide financing and consulting services to small and medium-sized businesses. Our vision is really to accelerate the success of entrepreneurs.

Status of Women committee  For both men and women looking to start a business, we offer financing and consulting services. We would take more risks. That means maybe doing a little more financing over longer periods of time, although we do price for that risk.

Status of Women committee  They do offer those, but our work complements that of other financial institutions. Again, the biggest difference would be in the length of time. We're very patient with our capital. For example, if we give a loan to a woman entrepreneur, sometimes we can wait a year or two for h

Status of Women committee  We wouldn't for all our transactions, but every client of ours is certainly a client of a chartered bank.

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure, do you...? I don't recall.

Status of Women committee  Was there a survey?

Status of Women committee  On those? I think I'm going to have to get back to you on that one. I'd like to give that some more thought, because I think that's a very important point.

Status of Women committee  I'm saying the challenge is the same, yes. Often I do meet with a lot of clients, men and women, and I ask them what they are seeing. The two things they're coming back with are access to financing, and recruiting and retaining talent. It's the same for men and women.

Status of Women committee  Thank you.

Status of Women committee  No, I don't think I would say that, because a lot of the women entrepreneurs we have are coming into it from a start-up point of view, which is very high risk. I think it's mainly because of the type of industry they are in, as well as because they own smaller businesses. As I me

Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  That's a really tough question to answer, why they're in those. What we can do, if we look forward, is probably target those industries if we want to increase the women entrepreneurs in the Canadian economy. We could look at food and services—it's 41% of the economy—and BDC actua

Status of Women committee  There are a few that I went through and they were similar for both men and women. We talked about maintaining cash flow, time management, and those are the ones you're speaking of. Really, I think the biggest one that BDC could help with, as I said, is maintaining the cash flow