Thank you very much for the question.
One of the biggest challenges we see from our membership is access to customers.
We recently released a survey that we do annually, asking our CEOs what challenges they are facing. About 40% said that the biggest challenge to growing their business here in Canada is access to customers.
When we take a step back and see who the biggest customers are here in Canada, they are the governments, whether that's the federal government, the provincial governments or the municipal governments. They make up roughly 12% to 15% of GDP in spending each year. When we take a look at that, we're seeing where they're procuring from, and the reality is that a lot of these scaling firms we represent do not have access to that.
The recent buy Canadian legislation that was introduced by the government over the winter was a good step forward, but there is still more that needs to be done, whether that is looking at how we're allowing our companies to compete in these procurement processes or, as well, looking at what is a Canadian company.