Personally, I'd say that we're well aware...and we stay in close contact with the Canadian Venture Capital Association on this file. It's a very complex file. Their single greatest barrier to increased venture capital investment right now is the fact that the industry has not generated sufficient returns to draw investors into that asset class. Depending on the time horizon over which the return is measured, we can even see negative returns from venture capital.
A group of institutional investors and others have essentially exited the asset class, so they're having trouble getting money in from private sector investors. In that respect, governments have taken over and done a lot of the heavy lifting, if you will, on the investment side. So we have seen investments, such as the $190 million Ontario Venture Capital Fund, the $750 million Teralys Capital Fund in Quebec. The governments of British Columbia and Alberta have also been active in the field. Since the spring, investments have been announced for the Business Development Bank of Canada, and that included a $350 million announcement over three years, $90 million of which is for investment in specialized funds in syndication with other venture investors, and $290 million in the direct venture capital operations of the Business Development Bank of Canada itself.
Again, we kind of share the concern, but it's a question of whether there is a structural market flaw here of some kind, that the market itself is not delivering the money that these innovative businesses require. In that case, government is stepping in and trying to do what it can do. A lot of our effort has been focused on the early stage of the investment, where we think market gaps are the most acute. Private sector investors don't tend to go in at that stage because it could take up to 10 years to commercialize a company. It's a question of maybe getting the right incentives back in place and in some way finding a way through which government can partner again.
In the meantime, the BDC remains the preferred investment vehicle for the federal government to intervene.