Thank you for that.
I can certainly answer some of them; I may have to come back with a response on some of the others.
In terms of the Build In Canada innovation program, that was begun, as I mentioned, five years ago as a pilot.
Essentially, if you think about procurement traditionally, procurement says, “Tell me what you want. We'll write a statement of work and we'll go out and buy that thing that you know you want.”
This was just the opposite. We did it on an annual basis; we had an annual call. We essentially said, if, as a Canadian business, you have an innovative idea, bring forward your innovation. We do it now for both military and non-military goods and services. You apply online; it's all electronic, with no paper, and now it's 24/7, you can apply any time. Innovation never sleeps, so you shouldn't have to wait a year on the cycle of procurement to bring your innovation in. We changed the program because innovators told us that's what we had to do, and they're absolutely right, so we've done it.
The other thing is that when they come in, they have highly specialized technical people. We work with IRAP, which is part of the NRC. They look at it and we challenge it to see if it is truly innovative. Software that goes from version 6.1 to 6.2 is not likely to be innovative. It has to be a really significant innovation.
Then, once we have reviewed it and we say it's innovative, we move you forward in the process. You've been identified as an innovation and accepted into the program. The next step is we have to work with that company or innovator to find a champion department. It's like a harmony program. We try to match a company, an individual, with a government department. We post it on our website, where it's all very public as to who's in. We work very strongly with the other government departments through the people in our office to find matches. Sometimes it's very obvious as to where it would go.
To give you a sense of the scale after five years, I can essentially give you the numbers for all the companies that have come in. Since we were launched, we've had 272 pre-qualified innovations come through. We've awarded 205 contracts worth $72 million; 96% of these were SMEs. Many of them have never done business. They're smart in innovation. What they're not smart at is business, finance; they never did a business plan. For many of them, their first introduction to the business model is coming to our program. Our program is designed not to be critical, but to provide support, help clarify, give examples, and make it easy for them to get through, and to help them find a match.
Then when they get into the program itself and they're actually in the test, we buy that innovation. We buy it and we place it in that testing department. We establish a test plan with both the testing department and the innovator, and we also do the procurement, because we're actually buying that product for the department. They do the test plan. I can give you examples.
It was mentioned earlier that the impact of first sale to a Canadian government is huge. We've had companies that, even though they hadn't actually completed the test, have been literally able to get opportunities abroad because, in fact, the Government of Canada had already taken this product this far. I can give you examples of companies that have grown into a tremendous success story, and they've told us this. One of them I'll just raise for you. It's called Aeryon Scout, from Waterloo, Ontario.