The BCAP program was a collaborative effort, so instead of a bank declining a transaction—for instance, because they have reached a limit internally, either on the sector or for the borrower—instead of declining access to credit, they would refer it to BDC. That's what I mean by a limited access to credit. In some cases, for instance, a bank could have a limit on a borrower, a limit in the sense that we don't want to exceed $50 million or $40 million. This is not really the reality of the smaller transactions. It's more the mid-size companies where you're going to see that. So the bank, instead of declining access to credit, will simply phone BDC and ask us to share this transaction. Then we'll do it 50-50 or we'll take a portion of it. That's how we make it available.
Why it was needed is that BDC has hundreds of branches across Canada. It's relatively small in terms of reach. It doesn't have the same number of branches as financial institutions, so by working in collaboration we were actually trying—and that's what we've been doing—to make sure that access to credit continues to be there.
On the $600 million that we did under BCAP, in a recession the activity of BDC would diminish, decrease, because normally the entrepreneurs are not likely to make new projects. They'll wait until the time is better for them. It's just the economy of the project. What we've experienced in this recession is an increase in our activity, which is counterintuitive. Why? Because the marketplace all of a sudden lost many players; they just disappeared, like the Iceland bank.