I thank you for your question.
There is, in fact, a great deal of room. We are doing what our means allow us to do with the businesses we fund, which are businesses with 20 employees or less and sales of 2 million dollars and under. We want to introduce them to a culture of innovation. As you may suspect, Ms. Chatel, by introducing them to a culture of innovation, we are far from funding projects that would lead them to making this culture a reality.
A few years ago, the network created an innovation committee and an innovation group. We were trying to find out how we, within our own organizations, could establish a culture of innovation in order to better help other businesses. However, we quickly saw that impostor syndrome could come to the forefront. Ideally, there would have been money to access the ecosystem, consultants, innovation specialists in Quebec as well as educational institutions. This would have allowed us to better support businesses.
All that we could do was bring the message about innovation to their door, but it stopped there, because we did not have the means to do anything else. As you said, big businesses can access funding that allows them to lead innovation projects, whereas the small businesses or medium businesses have a harder time doing so.
If the federal government, through its agencies, were to grant us a certain amount to fund our clientele's innovation projects, that would be a significant asset for our network and our members.