That's a really good question, and it's a little bit outside of our realm. We tend to target large emitters, large companies, that can have substantial environmental and social gains.
A portion of our business does look at venture-stage companies and SMEs in the international context.
I think how governments can help venture-stage companies around sustainability in general and climate change in particular relates to some of the things the other witnesses have said. There's not necessarily a lack of capital that needs to flow, but a lack of implementers who can help create the right capacities within organizations—whether they're SMEs, local civil society institutions or community organizations—in order to implement practices that are economical and cost-effective, but also technically sound and efficient.
I think that gap is where government can play a role. How do you make the capital turn into impact? That's through technical assistance programs and capacity-building assistance.
I agree with the point that was made by the other witness as well, that providing that money through debt finance is often problematic, especially at the SME level. SMEs in developing countries have a much greater challenge, and the barrier of entry to become an SME in a country like Tanzania, which was mentioned, is much lower. SMEs there are companies that are $10,000 to maybe $200,000 in value, which is a very different scenario from what we're talking about in the Canadian context. Saddling them with a debt burden rather than providing that capacity in other ways to help them build their own economic viability is a detriment to the system.
I think countries at the international, bilateral, and multilateral levels and at the domestic level can support SMEs to develop their capacities in order to succeed.