As I said, our sector receives about 7% of funding from government. Around half of that is in the form of grants and contributions and the other half is in the form of contracts for services. Our organizations, like United Way, Volunteer Canada, or John Howard Society of Canada , apply through MERX, like small and medium organizations, to deliver contracts, and frankly, Canadians indicate that they prefer charitable organizations. They trust them more than government to deliver these services in their communities. So SMOs, as we sometimes call them, are quite comparable to small and medium enterprises now in applying for contracts and becoming service delivery agents for government. Therefore, policies that tend to create long-term, ten-year vendors of record that favour large enterprises would make it virtually impossible for our smaller community organizations to apply.
On May 29th, 2006. See this statement in context.