Our sector is highly regulated. The testimony I heard on Tuesday talked about just running any kind of a business and all the red tape that's involved in that. That applies to our sector as well, just the red tape involved in running a business and the CRA and all of that. On top of that, our companies also require approvals for products from Health Canada, depending on whether they're trying to manufacture here. There are all sorts of rules around packaging requirements.
So it is very difficult for a small company to get a foothold in Canada. One of the very difficult things, as well, is with regulations that are not harmonized between Canada and the U.S. In many cases, while they're growing their business here in Canada, it's not easily transferable to then growing globally. If we have different requirements here that are not recognized elsewhere, we can have a good run at the Canadian environment, but not outside of Canada. If we have—which we do now—very different packaging requirements, for instance, for our products, we have to then look at a completely different approach if we're going into other countries.
Certainly in developing the regulations, there is no view to how they affect small business. I think it's important to make clear that health and safety for our sector is the number one priority and we fully agree with that and we think that's highly important. On top of that, there's no look from Health Canada at the economics of what they do, which is why we were so encouraged to see, in the economic update, this idea that even the regulators who regulate in the health space would have some responsibility to look at how their regulations affect companies from an economic perspective. That is not to say that would trump health and safety; it never should, but it should be a consideration, which just doesn't happen in this country.
It's very hard, especially in a highly, highly regulated sector, for any company to start small and grow.