Thank you, Terry. It's great to see you. Thank you for the question.
Obviously, we know that the western economy has been impacted by the pandemic and also by the drop in oil prices. We call that the double whammy. We're very much aware of what's going on right now.
Based on that, we decided to really work with western economic diversification. Through the great work of my dear colleague Terry Duguid, who is my parliamentary secretary, and many of our colleagues, we have been able to double the budget of western economic diversification because we saw that there was a clear need to do more.
In that sense, we tried also to work with the Community Futures organizations, the CFDCs all across the west to make sure the money was not only going to businesses that needed support in major cities, but also to businesses in the smaller towns across the rural parts of the west.
I also think that the west is not a monolithic bloc. It is not all the same. There are clear specific needs in the Prairies and there are clear specific needs in B.C. That is what we've been trying to do—to go closer to the ground, to do the right partnerships, and really to make sure that we protect jobs all across the west.
Based on that, we have been able to protect more than 23,000 jobs within a couple of months by making sure there would be interest-free loans to support these small and medium-sized businesses across the west through western economic diversification.