Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses for their presence here.
Mr. Petrak, I'm glad that you touched on BDC, the Business Development Bank of Canada, especially with respect to the support, or the lack of it, for new small manufacturing companies. We had heard from the regional development agencies on the utter lack of support for new small companies in the manufacturing sector and about commercial banks almost not touching any new small manufacturing companies. I just got information from BDC, which has an unsecured loan portfolio of over $2 billion, in relation to the hundreds of millions it invests in provincial capital and through yearly loans. During the last year, they have lent only the tiny sum of $23 million to new small manufacturing companies.
You mentioned BDC's lack of support. Can you expand on that briefly?