Absolutely. Unfortunately, because of time constraints, I wasn't able to finish the address, but one of the things at Valiant that we recommend and are an advocate of is a shared-risk philosophy.
If you walk into any bank today or go to a bank manager or a CEO or VP of a bank and say you'd like $100 million because you have a business plan and you're developing a new product, they're going to ask what industry you're from, and you're going to say manufacturing, that you support the auto industry. They're going to say, “Have a great day. Thanks for coming in.”
One of the challenges that many companies—and it's not necessarily based on size—face today is the ability to generate the cashflow and the funding required to invest in innovation. We're not going to be able to outwork a country of a billion people, but we can outsmart them. By leveraging our strengths in research and development and in developments in innovation with the proper and required funding and infrastructure to support those initiatives, I think we'll be able to transform not only the MTDM sector but the manufacturing sector in general into a vehicle to make Canadian companies more competitive again.
When you're looking at labour- and capital-intensive industries like the MTDM sector, without backing or some type of security, perhaps run through a credit facility type of environment with the federal government.... We're not asking for subsidies or handouts. This isn't corporate welfare; this is the shared risk concept of the government helping us to develop innovation, new products, so that you can get a return on your investment and so can we.