Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very much. My name is John Connell. I am the Director General of the Small Business Policy Branch at Industry Canada. With me today is Denis Martel, the Director of Research and Analysis at the Small Business Policy Branch.
I would like to begin by thanking you for your invitation. We are very pleased to have this opportunity to talk to you today of our work with small business.
I really want to underscore what a pleasure it is to be here. I have a lot of respect for your work and for ministers as well, and I embed those values in the organization I lead, so it is generally a pleasure and an honour to be here.
I'll say a little about myself to begin with. I'm a career public servant. I've been in the economic development field for about 29 or 30 years in my career, with recent experience in the Department of Finance and the Privy Council Office. I've been in my current position for approximately five years.
That means leading a team of about 140 people at the Department of Industry in respect of research, analysis, and policy development on small and medium-sized enterprises. It's the entire focus of the work we do, and we support the Minister of Industry in respect of his interests in that area, with the Department of Industry Act having assigned responsibilities to the minister for small businesses in respect of all matters that are not assigned to other ministers, departments, and agencies.
What I'd like to do, with your indulgence, is to provide a short deck on small business activities in the department, challenges and opportunities that we see facing the sector, and kind of an overview of recent initiatives in support of small business. I'm doing that on the understanding from the clerk of the committee that you had a general interest in knowing a little bit more about small businesses generally.
I can tell you emphatically that I'm not an expert on procurement. I'm not mandated to look at procurement in any way, although I certainly stay in touch with my colleagues in Public Works and Government Services to assess, on an ongoing basis, how small businesses may or may not be impacted by current government policies in this field. As well, of course, Industry Canada has a role in procurement, which is another section of the department. The industry sector is the main one. So the IRB policies and everything like that are found there.
I would ask you to bear that in mind in respect of any questions you may have for me.
Would you like me to go through this deck? I can circulate it now. It might take about 10 minutes for me to present it.