Thank you for that question. It's a very good question.
I would refer to economies of scale. The majority of my members are small and medium-sized enterprises and they struggle with the time and investment it takes to apply for the government funding that is involved in a lot of these large plants and large-scale investments in Canada today. We're talking about mom-and-pop shops, multi-generational businesses and family businesses that aren't on the same scale. When they go to work in the morning, they are looking at taxes and rising prices in every manufacturing input they have into their organization: increased cost for labour, if they can access it, increased cost of transportation, overlapping regulation. It's an incredibly difficult competitive environment, and then layer on that the relationship they have with retailers and hospitality sectors, which are two major selling channels, the retail and food service sectors, all of which are under the same strain. This is not unique to suppliers, and we're empathetic with the various value chain members who are dealing with the same issues as us.
Your question was around investment. The members that belong to FPC are generally small and medium-sized enterprises, family-owned, privately owned businesses that struggle every day to stay alive, to access labour. Those economies of scale that apply to Mr. McCain often don't apply to my members. It's a very difficult environment. While I appreciate those comments, and they are relevant to his scale of business, again, the government funding that's easily accessed by virtue of a company being able to have the time and expertise to invest in the application process is very difficult for the mom-and-pop shops, which have their hands on their operations each and every day.