Thank you very much for the questions, plural.
Maybe I'll just quickly take your last question first, in terms of the venture capital side.
To date at FCC, we have invested over $100 million in venture capital, which has also attracted an additional $150 million of venture capital from other organizations, and we have just recently authorized another $50 million to be invested in the industry. So we are committed to trying to do what you said there.
Going back to the first question on competitiveness, we take that question very seriously. We have not changed our pricing practices to our front-line staff since we were mandated to borrow from the federal government. We track our pricing very strongly. In fact, we can say that we know that when it's reported, 88% of the time we are the same or higher than our competitor's price.
We do not intentionally win customers on price. They tell us—and we have lots of evidence to show that—they are willing to pay more to deal with FCC because of our commitment to the industry, because of the knowledge of our staff, because of our products, etc.
We also track how much time we face competition on deals. On deals under $1 million, our field staff only report competition less than 20% of the time, actually. So there is not this big rush of people looking for this kind of business, apparently, other than us. Now certainly many of those individuals who deal with us would come back and deal with us again. But if there were significant interest, somebody would be banging on their door to try to attract that business. They are not telling us that's true. When you get to loans over $1 million, then the competitive rate goes up to 48%. So there is certainly interest in big loans, or more interest, but it's still less than half the time.
Our growth is not a result of FCC pushing its products and services on others. We are growing because our customers are pulling us to serve them and help them grow their businesses and their enterprises so that they can achieve their visions and dreams and expand their operations and create jobs in Canada. That's why that's happening.