On the military side, the potential for SMEs on these contracts is in the offsets coming from foreign manufacturers. We've insisted that for every dollar we give a foreign manufacturer, the manufacturer has to reinvest a dollar in the aerospace and defence industry. This is important—aerospace and defence, not any industry, not any investment. Boeing and Lockheed Martin have already announced nearly $2 billion in investments in Canada as a result of these obligations. These are real contracts, and some of them have been handed to the small and medium enterprises.
More generally, since we launched the office of small and medium enterprises in the spring of 2006, we've opened six offices. I've had round tables with business folks in those six cities. Not everybody's happy, let us be clear about this. People want the MERX system, our electronic tendering system, to be improved. Some people fear that there's an advantage given to Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto--the triangle. Some people believe that if you're outside the triangle you're at a disadvantage.
We're fixing all these things because we want more of these SMEs to be potential suppliers to the government. We think everybody wins, the economy wins, but we as a client win by having more people interested in bidding for our business.