I think that at the outset, the success of the Canadian DFI should not be measured by the extent to which it benefits or drives business to Canadian companies. Canadian small, medium, or large businesses should be competing for financing from the DFI on more or less equal footing with other organizations, people, or investors.
We're not going to generate the best projects, the best ideas, and the best returns by limiting the DFI to working only with Canadians or with a subset of Canadian businesses. That hasn't been a recipe for success with other DFIs, and in the case of OPIC, they've actively worked to step around the requirement for the local mandate.
The German company Siemens qualifies as a U.S. institution or organization for work with OPIC because, as I mentioned, they've kind of elastically defined “U.S.” to include any company that operates with a substantial amount of activity on American soil. I think that kind of disingenuous..., which congress has forced on OPIC, shouldn't play any part in setting up a clean institution from scratch. We should be clear that a Canadian DFI is meant to work with the best ideas and the best capital to produce impact for those developments and those financial objectives I mentioned.
Inevitably, a Canadian institution based in Montreal and staffed largely by Canadians is going to be one that Canadian companies and investors are able to access relatively easily, and where Canadians will have a cultural advantage in working with that institution. They will have networks of relationships. They will have sensitivities to the environment of that institution that exceed those of foreigners. I don't think we need to put our finger on the scale and provide them with additional advantages, and I don't think that we should try to commeddle regional or sectoral development in Canada with the objectives of international development under this institution and an adequate financial return to ensure that it's self-financing.