Thank you, Mr. Allison.
I appreciate the very kind question by Mr. Martin about our minister's performance.
I'll move on to a paper written by Alan Painter of the Policy Research Initiative and ask each of the non-government representatives to comment.
Mr. Painter wrote a paper on the role of the government in supporting the social economy, and I just want to read a portion and get your comment:
For governments to support social enterprises...they must at some point come up with the tax revenue to pay for the support, thereby imposing an economic cost on Canadians. Moreover, if governments provide funding directly to organizations, the strength of the relationship between the suppliers of goods and services and the preferences of consumers is weakened, since consumers no longer vote with their dollars. Finally, if government funding is available, a considerable amount of time will likely be spent seeking the funding, and this is also costly to society, which loses what would otherwise be accomplished with this time.
So while there are benefits associated with governments supporting social economy enterprises, there are also costs. Could you comment on those costs and that balance?