Thank you, Deputy.
Just to give a little summary, as of last March we had 61 contracts that had been signed with different innovators across Canada, mostly for goods and for some services, up to a value of almost $500,000. They ranged from as little as $30,000 up to almost $500,000.
We've gone forward. The government announced the extension to the Build in Canada innovation program. It is a bit of an evolution of the program. One of the things we discovered as we were managing this program was that there is a lot of interest in innovation in the defence industry space. Those innovations tend to require a little more investment, so we are looking at a program whereby part of the money will be set aside for military innovation, working with the Department of National Defence and the Defence Research Establishment to identify products that would be of use and worthy of investigating through the needs of defence.
The interesting thing about the program and its success so far—and it's largely anecdotal at this point, because we have to get enough products out to market—is that those whose products manage to make that first buyer piece and who use that in their promotion of their own business are able to sell abroad. That's generally the pressure we receive from small businesses. We have what they've invented, and they've invested in R and D, etc., but they need to make the first sale before they can actually commercialize that product.
I believe that when I spoke with the committee previously on this.... We've had a lot of success in those companies actually getting that product out to market. We can say now that a number of companies actually have incredibly good sales internationally, based on the fact that they were able to sell to the Government of Canada. That was one of the big pieces in our cross-country consultations. Small businesses want to have the government buy their things. This approach allows them to compete, to demonstrate that they are top of class, to have a government department test, and to help them finalize their product so it can go into a commercial market.