Thank you for giving me that opportunity.
What we are seeing and what we saw from the last federal budget is that certain federal funding programs are preferring businesses employing unionized labour over allowing any business to apply. We know that about 96% of SMEs in Canada are not unionized, and that goes for even construction businesses. They are legitimate businesses with legitimate workforces, and they just want to be able to compete for procurement opportunities.
In the federal budget, a communities benefit funding program was announced, and it was indicated that they would favour unionized labourers for those types of agreements. We're using taxpayer money to support a very small subset of our Canadian businesses. We need to make sure that the level playing field is open to all businesses to compete on procurement, and again, the federal government is setting that standard. We're seeing examples across jurisdictions. Even in B.C., there was a bill put forward in which they would prefer unionized labour for certain construction projects, and we're really just hoping that the government realizes that there are different types of businesses, and they are legitimate and they create jobs and contribute to our economy.