I should tell you that we go out and do detailed surveys every three years with suppliers all across Canada. The most obvious complaints are that we're too slow; our procurement process is too complex and difficult to understand, especially for small and medium enterprises; and payment is not always on time, which is a very hot issue, because, especially for small businesses, cash flow is critical, the number one issue.
Some other challenges are that they don't understand the process; they're not sure where to find the opportunity; they find our process bureaucratic, even if they understand it or choose to submit a bid; or they're found to be non-compliant because of a technical error.
This is all part of what we do. It is why we were funded as the office of small and medium enterprises. We go out all across Canada. We have six offices in every major region in Canada and we're constantly providing seminars, going to associations. We do about 1,100 trade shows, meetings with associations. All across Canada, we are trying to give people information about how to easily access opportunities through our website. It's an automated, simple process, with simple tools to access it. The challenge is to make them aware, in a very quick and easy way, of how to find opportunities. Clearly, it costs money and time.
Of course, larger businesses often have people who are specialized in responding to RFPs, whereas small companies do not. In Canada there are 2.5 million businesses, of which almost one million are one or two people. They just don't have the overhead. Our job is to make it simple, remove those barriers, and give them the tools, which is what we continue to do.