You have to remember that at that time everything was pretty much shuttered. People weren't coming in and buying high-end, premium products, and that's what made-in-Canada products are. They're not mass producing this stuff.
The proposition was, “Hey, there are many of us who are already doing this.” They were using their own base materials from the Canadian grains and fruit to produce alcohol and then basically destroying that alcohol and turning it into sanitizer. We were saying, “Just cover the cost. Get that base material and keep our staff working.”
That, actually, as a make-work thing would be sensible, because otherwise we were having to lay off all of our staff. Now, lots of us who really were champions of that continued to go forward with our own funds, because it was the right thing to do, and we wanted to protect our communities. That offer was definitely out there, and it was out there at the federal and provincial levels.
I get it. You know, it's complicated when you're running a big business. It's hard to run a sort of “Hey, we'll have your back”, but my dad likened it to the forest fires coming to our doorsteps out here in B.C. The guys with the skidders and the operators are right out there plowing those division roads, but they almost always get reimbursed for that. The government says, “Hey, we have your back. You guys do the right thing, and we're going to go through.” They don't stop and wait for it. What happened here was that the companies that stopped and waited, and waited for the paycheque, got rewarded, and the ones that got in early were overlooked.