Mr. Chairman, colleagues, we have, as you know, programs in essentially three areas. One area is to assist small business in continuing to get the financing they need in order to continue and grow their business.
Secondly, we have programs to reduce the regulatory and paper burden on small business, to free up their time and efforts to be invested back in their business, and then we have programs that provide tools to small businesses to again save them time, but also to give them positive input and information.
On the small business financing side, we have put into place considerable additional money to the BDC, as I mentioned. This is under the credit availability program, and we put more money into both the BDC and the EDC to allow them to increase their.... For the BDC, their loan rate was up 54% over the same period last year. So they're putting out significantly more money.
The small business financing program is also working somewhat better. We have increased the threshold that businesses can apply for and have also made the program easier. We continue to look for improvements to that program as well.
I mentioned some of the things we've done to reduce the paper burden. We've reduced the paper burden by 20%, and we're looking for changes and new improvements to that.
With respect to tools for small business, we have the BizPal program, which I hope you all know about. Essentially, it's a one-stop shop for businesses to run out a list of the licences and permits that they're going to need if they want to establish a new business or grow their business. That's a huge time-saver.
We also have just launched the new Canada Business network, which is an online portal, although it can also be accessed in person or by phone, that tells all about the government programs and services that assist small business. It also gives them positive tips about staff management and about a number of skills they are going to need in order to succeed.
If you haven't checked out the Canada Business network, I urge you to do that. I think the committee would be interested to test it out. If you have feedback for us, we are of course happy to hear that. We've put a lot of improvement into that.
So, colleagues, those are some of the measures we have in place.