I'll take a stab at it.
On the strategic innovation fund, $10 million is actually the project size. That's the de minimis on it.
In part, it's because of the administration of the funding. The way the funding is set up around these types of programs is that they're there to support investment. The companies need to come forward with investment plans, and then, through negotiations and based on our terms and conditions, we are able to effectively buy down a portion of the investment they're going to make. The strategic innovation fund is able to provide non-repayable funding, and we have done that. There have been a lot of announcements over the last year, including for the auto sector, that included non-repayable elements in the form of grants, in addition to the loans. There is some flexibility on that.
We also have, through the department, regional development agencies, which have existing budgets, and we have been working actively with them. As with the strategic innovation fund, though, there needs to be a capital project or an investment that the company is looking to make. What we don't have programming at ISED for is simply for turning tariff receipt cheques into cash. That has been one of the challenges we've had in terms of the discussions. The duty drawback provisions do allow that to happen, but some of the frustration you've heard is around the time it has taken for responses. We're all aware of that. I think you'll hear about that when the Department of Finance and CBSA come in to talk to you about that. They are working to get the process done as quickly as possible.
The other thing is that, in the U.S., there is a remissions process as well. With the duties they're collecting, there is a process by which companies can seek to have the money returned to them. What we saw early on when the tariffs were put in place against Canadian firms was that a lot of shipments didn't go for while, particularly on the steel side. The reason they didn't go was that they were waiting for their customers in the U.S. to post the remission requests on the United States Department of Commerce's website. There's data now, and Canada represents about 20% of the requests that have been made to the Department of Commerce. They would obviously have to be approved and considered, but that one plus the duty drawback are the two closest programmatic lines that we have, in terms of the need you've pointed to.