Sure.
First of all, thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak.
I'd like to speak on the part of small business. There are many different partners in the Olympic movement. There are large companies like Bell Canada who have invested in this movement, but there are also very small companies like our own.
Hunter Canada is a small company established in Montreal. We have an office in Montreal and another one in Toronto, which is now the address for our new licence. We also have a distribution and sales centre in Vancouver.
We were very pleased recently to be chosen by the Vancouver Olympic Committee to produce novelty items and souvenir items using the Olympic marks. We are perhaps, then, your official T-shirt company that you were talking about.
While the eyes are going to be on Canada during the Olympic Games, our mandate is to give every Canadian and every visitor to the games the opportunity to take home a souvenir, a souvenir representing the quality of what Canadian companies can represent.
We are firmly based in Canada. We do over 80% of our production in Canada. We're a Canadian company, offering Canadian products, believing in the Canadian movement.
I have to say that our Olympic licence represents a significant strategic investment on behalf of a company of our size. We're a small company, doing approximately $5 million in sales.
In undertaking this venture we had to make a commitment to pay the guarantees in the sales, guarantees of over actually a half million dollars, which is not a small amount for a company of our size. However, this is dwarfed, really, in comparison with the funds that we're going to invest in this program over the course of the next three years.
We invested because we're confident that this investment will be sound and that our business will grow, and it will give a positive legacy to our firm.
My journey to Vancouver began in Lillehammer in 1992 as a licensee of the Canadian Olympic movement, and we were thrilled when VANOC decided to choose us to be a part of this amazing event. However exciting the opportunity was, we really had to think, as a small company, what this investment would do to us. If we managed it properly internally, and if we were given the protection that we needed from our licensor, this could be an opportunity to raise our company to the next level, doubling our sales staff, doubling our sales in general. However, if it wasn't managed properly internally and if we didn't have protection and were faced with other companies that didn't make these kinds of investments, then it could ruin us as a company, following the games. This is the type of investment that is make or break for companies of our size.
We are concerned about the losses that we could incur should adequate legal protection not exist to effectively address the sale of cheap counterfeit Olympic goods. We've already begun production on merchandise based on forecasted sales, and this will result in a large amount of inventory that we're going to carry leading up to the 2010 games. If passed, Bill C-47 will offer our business the assurance that our exclusive rights to produce officially licensed merchandise will be protected and that the value of its significant investment will not compromised by the saturation of counterfeit products in the marketplace.
As a Canadian company, Hunter is proud of our association with the 2010 games. We feel that our licence is just one important legacy that the games will deliver to Canadians and Canadian businesses.
We do feel, I'd like to say, that VANOC has made it a point to make this Canada's games—not just Vancouver's and not just B.C.'s. The group of licensees ranges from Montreal to Quebec City to Toronto to London to Winnipeg—all across the country—with the same goal in mind: to be part of this program.
We intend to increase our jobs in Canada—increase our marketing team, our sales team, warehouse team, as well as production staff. Our company is a reflection of Canada, with the ethnic and cultural diversity within our own company.
Whether a small company like ours or Bell Canada, I think that we all have the same aim in mind: to be a part of this program and to make a commitment to the Olympic movement, as well as to athletes. The royalties that we pay to VANOC go to athletes, so companies like retailers or consumers buying from outside the licensee base don't have to pay the royalties, which again, goes back to the Olympic movement.
So on behalf of Hunter Canada and other official licensees, I would ask the committee to support the smooth passage of this bill.