Thank you both, gentlemen, for being here.
I had the opportunity a couple of years ago to serve on the special committee that the House of Commons established to look into cooperatives in Canada. One of the main themes that came out in the testimony was that a lot of people, including a lot of government agencies and departments, didn't understand how cooperatives worked and what cooperatives were. I'm wondering if there is the same problem with social enterprise and social finance. I'm wondering if you have any suggestions of what we can be doing at the federal level to create a much higher awareness of what social finance is and what these social purpose enterprises do exactly, so that we can make sure that agencies like the Business Development Bank of Canada and perhaps some other departments and agencies can better understand this model and would be more receptive to finding ways to work with and support social finance in the country.
Mr. Vermette, perhaps you'd like to start and then I'd be interested in hearing Mr. LePage's thoughts on that.