Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.
In a moment, I'll turn it over to my colleague, Mr. Lawrence-Whyte, who will speak a bit about the office of small and medium enterprises and what they're doing to be able to support small business in terms of federal procurement.
To answer the question more directly, there are a couple of things that we are doing and have been doing to seek to remove barriers. What I would note is that some of the barriers to entry in terms of procurement impact all small and medium-sized enterprises regardless of ownership.
I mentioned two of the things previously. One, we're implementing the electronic procurement solution. This solution, which we're rolling out now, is going to make it easier for companies to register for federal procurement, to find opportunities on the new CanadaBuys website and to be able to participate in federal procurement.
I mentioned contract simplification. I don't necessarily want to repeat that as well, but one of the things we have been doing is really increasing the level of outreach and engagement with under-represented groups to raise awareness of federal procurement opportunities.
If the chair will permit, I'd like to turn it over to my colleague, Clinton Lawrence-Whyte.