I would say that it absolutely needs to be improved, and I'll put it within this particular context. As for the regional development authorities across Canada, that process is broken, from our perspective. There is no consistency in terms of what happens in western Canada with Western Economic Diversification Canada, what happens on the east coast to ACOA, and what happens with respect to FedDev. I think it's broken.
We used to have a fairly good relationship with WD in terms of partnering with them on a variety of different activities, and as an organization I would suggest that we probably haven't been that active with them for the last 10 years. It's an issue of clarity. What is the process? What are the programs that have been identified so that economic development agencies and jurisdictions can tap into those resources? When we speak with different individuals who are part of, in this instance, Western Economic Diversification Canada, we never get a clear understanding of what the requirements are for agencies such as ours in order to be able to qualify for certain types of support, which are critically important for us.
There are federal objectives that need to trickle down in terms of giving agencies on the ground the capacity to deliver on federal economic policy objectives, and we can't because we don't have the resources to do that. Our typical resource structure has been through the regional development authorities, yet when I talk to my colleagues from the Halifax Partnership or from Invest Toronto, they're dealing with a completely separate set of rules and allocation of resources.
The comments that we have received were, “Well, that's the way we do it in the west, and that's the way they do it in the east.” I said, “Hang on a second here. Is this not a federal program that has been designed to create greater capacity at the local and regional levels in order to execute economic development, thereby creating greater prosperity for the country? If it is, then why is there such a great discrepancy in terms of how programs within the regional development authorities are designed? What are the criteria that have been set?” It's extremely frustrating, to the extent that we were dealing with a variety of industry associations and organizations that are in the same situation. There isn't that clarity, and so what ends up happening is it becomes dismissed as a valuable asset supporting regional and local economic development.
I think it needs to have a review. I think there needs to be a better understanding of how the federal government looks at this from a national perspective, and I think there needs to be a conversation with the organizations that it was set up to support, because that level of dialogue, certainly from our experience, has not taken place.