What I encourage you to do is talk to people at the BDC; I can hook you up for that. What we are trying to do with the BDC...and the president has given speeches on this.
First, they're improving their management consultancy capacity in regard to ICT adoption by SMEs. You have to start by having somebody who can help you connect those two things. They are dramatically increasing their capacity to give consulting advice.
Secondly, they are doing a training program for their loans officers so that the officer will be able to encourage entrepreneurs--because it's a loan, not a grant or a contribution. They have to be convinced that this would be helpful to their growth, that this would helpful to their business. In order to do that, the loans officer has to understand what is available and how to sell it, if you wish, as part of a loan package. There's marketing, there's enhancing the supply chain, and all the things that small businesses have to go through. What we're trying to do is inculcate the fact that there is another dimension: ICT.
Thirdly, we have a federal-provincial process going, because provinces do have tools and levers also. We are pooling our knowledge, pooling our programs and resources, including at the BDC, with provincial governments to come out with something that would be available to SMEs and to say, in regard to the ICT adoption, this is what the federal government can do and this is what provinces can do.
Lastly, as I mentioned, we are trying to get the IRAP folks to focus on this even more.