The EU has a very concerted strategy to enable SMEs to become a more significant part of its economy. It's not a surprise, therefore, that when the EU decides to deploy over $700 billion in capital over three years, it includes a requirement for all public stimulus of private sector investment.... It requires large project proponents to include SMEs in their project proposals.
This is part of a multipronged strategy. I can tell you, for example, that there is an EU program under way in Canada that is enabling EU scale-ups to understand how to export to Canada. There are people at the EU delegation who have a responsibility now, a project under way, where they are enabling EU SMEs to meet with large Canadian companies—Maple Leaf Foods is an example—to solve their problems with new innovations coming from the EU. The committee might find it interesting to consider this very systematic approach.
I have, in the past, requested reports from Statistics Canada on exports from Canada by SMEs, and those reports are no longer annual. We don't know the relevance of SMEs to Canada's exports. At one point, it was 25% of the value of all exports—so, equal to that of the mining industry. They're very, very significant to Canada's economy. However, we don't know what it is now because we no longer keep track of it.