Yes, indeed, and it also ties into the previous exchange on local know-how. If you want to be effective in the development sphere, you need on-the-ground expertise. If you have an operation of $50 million or $60 million a year, then how are you going to get the local nuance? Is it going to be by being in Montreal, or is it going to be by having a network of informants and professional staff around the world? It's likely the latter. The more you do of the latter, the higher the overhead. I think a small size is fine to begin, but this is not a long-term sustainable model. In the long term, there is going to have to be a difference in ratio, and the way to change that ratio is not by having fewer staff but by having larger lending activities.
Now, on the question of how one identifies these elements and whether it is easier to tack them onto existing priorities, I could make a case for you either way. I think the case that my colleague from Oxfam made—empowering women's rights organizations results in greater knowledge of women's entrepreneurship activities—is a good one. This, however, will require coordination between the aid officials who reside in GAC and the development finance officials who reside in EDC.
Frankly, it's not readily apparent to me that empowering women's rights organizations will lead to better market information about women's entrepreneurship. I could be just as comfortable saying to let the banking folks identify opportunities, whether in infrastructure or in technology start-ups, through other channels. If everything is homogenous, where do the new ideas come from?
That was the relationship between the former CIDA and IDRC. IDRC did not do absolutely everything CIDA did, and there was a reason for that. It was there that the experimentation happened. That's where the risks were taken. If something works, you then scaled it up and it became CIDA.
I'd make the same case with respect to the DFI. The DFI selects sectors that might not be in Canada's mainstream, and then lets them grow. It may be that over time an area, like using blockchain technology for democratic development, which is not in our current ODA priorities, might become an ODA priority because of something small and interesting and successful that the DFI did 10 years previously.