Yes, our data does show that SME integration with the U.S. has been built for years. They've built in place business contracts that they cannot easily get out of. They have their supply chains, they have customer relationships, and despite a lot of our data showing that a lot of Canadian SMEs are diversifying—in fact 50% of SMEs have said that they are moving away from the U.S. market as much as possible in their supply chain—there still is a significant number of SMEs that just cannot lose that reliance on the U.S. market for supplies, for their inputs to their business operations.
We have been hearing under different jurisdictions that some small businesses get blocked out of procurement opportunities just because their inputs or part of the inputs in their business come from the U.S. or come from elsewhere. In fact, a local business here in Ottawa recently was blocked out of a municipal opportunity because parts of their inputs in building parks for our communities were from the U.S., and I think that goes back to my message that we have to look at the economic contribution that small businesses make in our communities. This business has close to 20 employees. There are engineers. These are good-paying jobs, but the business is losing out on these economic benefits.
This is where we need to leverage those added-value components. While not every little piece a business uses might be Canadian raw material, we need to ensure that those businesses can compete fairly for those procurement opportunities. As the federal government is setting that sort of gold standard for other jurisdictions, we just want to see that being applied across the board fairly.