We play an important role in enabling members of the middle class to save money. As I said earlier, our shareholders are not rich and famous. They really are middle-class people. A big part of what we do is educating people and helping them invest for the long term, for retirement.
Many of our 630,000 shareholders made their first RRSP contributions through the Fonds de solidarité. Our Quebec-wide network of volunteers helps us raise Quebeckers' awareness. We really focus on making sure that our volunteers, who are in workplaces, are near potential shareholders. Raising awareness is important, but what counts in the end is the proximity of those who encourage others to save.
As I also said earlier, the people who contributed to RRSPs for the first time—I believe it's more than 60% of them—continued to do so in other financial institutions. The tax credit was certainly advantageous for labour-sponsored funds, but it also prompted Canadians to invest with other financial institutions for retirement.
With respect to the effect of that, if the tax credit had not been there to encourage those individuals to save the $2,000 or $2,500, I'm not sure that money would have been invested. It would definitely not have been invested in venture capital. According to one study, people would be less likely to save for retirement. That money would probably be spent instead. That's not bad for the Canadian economy, but I think we need to recognize the importance of saving too.
If we were not there to enable people to save with the help of the tax credit, that money would not have flowed to Canadian companies, and certainly not to venture capital. Of the 2,500 companies that have received a Fonds de solidarité investment, 80% are SMEs with fewer than 100 employees.
Our primary mission, our work, is to invest in SMEs, which, may I remind you, have created a lot of jobs in Canada over the past decade.