Do you mind if I answer in English? It's easier for me. Banking terms are all in English, unfortunately.
Let's talk about marketing. You are right, BDC is perhaps not as well known as it should be, simply because of our size. If you compare BDC to the size of the financial institutions that were here an hour ago, it's very different. As I said, we have 100 branches; they have 6,000. We can do some publicity, but that's not going to solve it all by itself.
BCAP, in my view, is going to help us much more, because it is forcing financial institutions before they decline a loan, if they feel it is a creditworthy company, to refer the business to BDC. That's helpful. Having relationships with the financial institutions, with other crown corporations, with all of you here in this room, is what we need, so you need to talk about BDC and its role.
We invest every year in marketing and we try to do it across Canada. Having said that, the main goal of BDC and why we're able to sustain ourselves is to give it back to entrepreneurs. The main goal of BDC is to provide financing, consulting and so forth, not necessarily to only do marketing. We try to balance the two.
BDC is starting to be much more known during this recession than before, so that is a good thing for us. It's an opportunity for us at the moment, that we are grasping with all our passion.
Your third question is one that requires a little bit of reflection, because you're basically asking what is in the best interest of the industry. That's what you are asking. What is in the best interest of the industry may not be in the best interest of every player, hence the difficulty we are facing today.
In good times it's easy to get into business. It's easy to start a business and it's easy to make money--or not, but when things are going well, there's lots of money in the marketplace. In a recession, we are going into a contraction. Offers exceed demand today. That is the issue. Therefore, it is going to be painful, and some form of rationalization will have to occur. The difficulty is there, and I think the minister understands this. I had a chance to sit down with her about 30 or 45 days ago, actually, and we had a discussion around that, and I believe she understands this deeply.