Madam Chair, I just want you to be reassured that this is a very, very important issue for our department. We are focused on it. We had a question about how we can make sure that small businesses know what the role is of the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises. We've held hearings right across the country from the east to the west coast, listening to small businesses. In fact, we actually paid small-business people to come to the meeting, in recognition of the fact that not everybody has lots of staff and can afford to take time off, and so on.
With all this work, we have gathered the concerns of small businesses. By specializing our teams into commodities, we are beginning to understand what the industry is composed of—where the businesses are, who is making things, and who is supporting things. Instead of just putting out a request for proposal that is neutral to anybody, we are now understanding each industry.
As Minister Fortier mentioned, our request for proposal is coming out. The Office of Small and Medium Enterprises needs to sign off on that request and tell us the impact on small businesses. In many cases this office has helped us to shape the proposal, and helped small businesses get access to our business. We make sure, for example, that we break up the big requirement into regions. We also put in requirements for physical presence near major centres, preventing a big supplier from just sending things across the country without engaging local businesses, and so forth. So there are a lot of things.
What we are finding is that we don't really have to sacrifice that much in efficiency. Small businesses are stepping up to the plate, and we're very happy about that.
