It's a great question. Canada's ITB policy is really important for Canadian manufacturers to ensure that they can participate in these North American and in some cases global supply chains to help build, secure and provide the kit that Canada's military needs. There are opportunities to improve the program. The government should be considering it as it considers what a defence industrial strategy looks like.
One of the hardest parts is, again, for Canadian SMEs to feel connected to the government and its goals. Under the ITB policy, of course, it is through their supply chains and the large OEMs which have well-established relationships. They work with various contractors across the world and through the United States for various platforms that they've built in the past.
It can be hard for SMEs to one, show, offer and compete on how they could do something domestically that would be as good, if not better, within those supply chains. Two, it's hard for them to grow in terms of their relationship with the federal government, because those small and medium-sized manufacturers have no connectivity with the government. It is only through the OEM supply chain that they have an opportunity to do what they can.
I think that finding ways in a process to connect those innovative small and medium-sized manufacturers to help them grow within that framework needs to be an important consideration.