Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for coming forward.
Ms. Wright, a lot of people talk about SMEs and the fact that they have trouble exporting. You refer to some of the problems such as lack of time of the owners. For example, normally it's companies with five to ten employees where the owner does everything, does the payroll, then another day, he'll do the fixing of his machinery in the shop in the back, and then he goes out and puts on his tie and does the selling.
My experience, from being an accountant, is that you'll say to somebody, “You should do this with your company”. The owner is all into it, but then some “fire” occurs in his business, and he changes the channel and forgets about what he said he was going to do the prior day. He doesn't have the resources to allocate that project to somebody.
And the major one is exporting. I'm in total agreement that they don't have the human resources, and then the capital is missing. If I'm in Canada—I'm from Montreal—and I'm going to pay for a plane ticket to go to China, it's going to cost me at least $10,000, between plane tickets, accommodations, and then trying to take people out—that's a lot of money for a small business.
I like your idea of mentoring business students, but the problem with that is, the business student doesn't have practical experience, the business student is going to want to get paid, and so how do you start that? How do match that? What's the starting point?