Yes. It's not directly through the Department of Industry, but one of the biggest ones that all of you will be well aware of is, of course, the SR and ED program, which is incredibly important to our members. However, it is also very difficult to navigate, and there's a lot of uncertainty. We often talk to members about access to certain programs or tax credits, and they'll say, “It was very helpful to my business. I greatly appreciate it, but if I had to make the same decision, I'm not sure I would have applied in the first place.”
A lot of our federal programming is designed, of course, to stop bad actors, but that framing is how many officials or the programs will engage with businesses directly. They engage as if everybody is trying to defraud the government, as opposed to trying to be enablers that are going to help Canadian companies succeed. It's not to say we don't need to have strong measures in place, but I think we do need to find ways to continue to simplify these programs.
When we sit down with small and medium-sized members of ours and there's a menu of dozens of different programs across the RDAs and various other departments, including the Department of Industry, we try to walk them through what is required. Then they start to think through what kind of consultant or other external support they would need just to access these. It's a lot for them, especially because these are folks who are operators themselves. They are managing the floor. They do not have a big compliance department to help them manage these things. I think that trying to simplify all the programs that are designed to support these types of investments is a good place to start.