It's very complicated. I shouldn't say it's complicated for them to do; it's very easy for them to do. But I think that because of the dollar values of the contracts and because of what you see now, with between 90% and 100% of the marine work going to one company on the west coast and similarly on the east coast, you have such an unlevel playing field. That's what I mentioned earlier, that they really need to look at basically getting the SMEs involved in contracts as soon as possible. That may be directly awarding contracts to them and giving the SMEs work.
FELEX was an example of where they were given the work. They're giving the work to multinationals. They seem to have a problem with trying to give it to SMEs, yet they have a mandate that Minister Fortier mentioned of 40%. How are they going to reach that mandate? I don't see it, when they have 90% to 100% of it going to a multinational right now. It's impossible, unless they award work directly to SMEs. That might have to be done through the local offices, to get their input.
Also, if you look at the Small Business Administration in the United States, they have set-aside programs, where they say 25% of any large contract that's given out—for instance, if FELEX was given out, then 25% would have to be given out to SMEs. I can tell you that if the multinationals were forced to give out 25% of the work to SMEs, they would not give it to me. They would give it to somebody else and make sure that I didn't get one dime of that money. That's why a set-aside program has to be a program that would award contracts directly to SMEs or look at getting the three SMEs that have their own facilities on the west coast involved in working together to build and repair ships together. That is another possibility. That could happen on the east coast as well.
Another thing with the SBA in the United States is that the contracts are enacted in Congress, as is the size of an SME. When Shereen spoke of the size of a small company being 100 people or less and a medium-sized company being 500 or less, those numbers are actually enacted in Congress in the United States and defined by Congress. They are looked at every year, and they are done specifically for each industry. In other words, shipyards and marine repair companies in the United States have an actual number that is used. Actually, it's 1,000 there, as that's how big their small shipyards are because of the large support for them. That is a number enacted by Congress, and it's specifically done for each industry.
You can't just say that it's 100 for a small enterprise when you're not talking about what industry that might be. With 100 employees, that's actually a fairly big shipyard in Canada now because of what's happened with past tendering processes. What the SBA also does in the United States is they say that projects of x dollars and under have to go to SMEs. They define what an SME is for that industry, and then, for example, contracts of $5 million, $10 million, or $20 million or less can only be awarded to SMEs and not to the large companies. That's another example of the way they do things.
We also need infrastructure support.