First of all, thank you for inviting us today, and thank you for the opportunity to answer this question and introduce some of the facts around the work of OSME.
I think there is some lack of understanding of the role of OSME. Just to put this to rest, we do not engage in assisting SMEs in Canada to do business with other governments. Our focus is on the federal government. I want to really clarify that.
Our role is to assist small and medium enterprises as they are defined by Industry Canada: medium-sized enterprises have under 500 employees, and small enterprises have under 100 employees. That definition is government-wide, and we are focused on both small and medium enterprises.
The role of OSME since its inception has been to accomplish three major things. The first thing is outreach.