As to the amount of money, I would say the sky is the limit. In Quebec right now, there are just 130,000 people who are considered to have severe barriers to employment and who receive social assistance. We believe that a good many of those 130,000 people are unable to work for various reasons. For our part, I think we could help at least 5%, 6% or 7% of these people re-enter the labour market if we had the necessary resources and could create adapted jobs for them. That could take a considerable amount of money.
We have a specific project, which we outlined in our brief. It would create at least 1,200 new jobs over the next five years. That is regular growth. We would like the number of available or subsidized jobs in the provincial program to increase by 5% per year. Our brief includes some figures. It represents an additional $3.4 million in the first year, and it would be more in the following years, of course.
Your second question pertains to the number of companies that need assistance. We conducted a survey of our 42 members in early 2016. We asked them how many positions they would need to help them consolidate their current activities and whether they intended to develop plans to create adapted jobs in other sectors, in other regions or near their current regions.
The results showed that, over the next three years, 1,000 new positions could easily be created by the existing adapted companies. For our part, we think the existing adapted companies can generate thousands of new jobs. It is not necessary to create new adapted companies. The existing ones are ready to transfer their current staff, to set up in other regions, and to develop other places of business in order to make jobs available for persons with disabilities in those sectors.