Thank you, Lianne.
Essentially cutting to the chase, the issue is we're not capitalized effectively. I outlined to you the critical mass of capital funding issues we face with two extremely strong incumbents in the area. What I think is the issue is during the pandemic, when there was a dire need suddenly for beef, we would receive calls from customers, and they would say, “We need beef now.” Payment from the customer is going to be in 30 days, and yet the cattle rancher will need to be paid right away. That working capital gap is a huge issue.
Related to government programs, and how they could help, really, there are two things at stake here: there's capital expenditure and there's operating expenditure. On the capital expenditure, the emergency processing fund is a great start, because it can focus on addressing the capacity constraints that you have in the facility. As it relates to the operating expenditure, the regional development funds can be useful, such as the western diversification program and specifically the business scale-up program because it allows you to scale up the working capital.
There has been a challenge. I guess it's established in tech companies. There have been years of no profits. But the scalability of going into export markets is enormous. It has to be nurtured over time. The traditional financial scoring system may not reflect some of the strategic realities of starting a new plan. These things have to be nurtured. It's the expectation that you're going to have setbacks, the expectation that things will go wrong. I think there has to be patience with that process. When I look at the strategic objectives of Canada, I'm not saying we can replace Cargill or JBS—that's like the power system. But if you were a hospital, wouldn't you want to have a backup power generator in case? The pandemic has really underscored that vulnerability. The lesson here is that nobody is infallible and you can't put all your eggs in one basket.