Thank you for your excellent presentations.
I had three areas, just listening to your testimony today, that I would like to learn more about from you.
One is the area of cash flow and access to capital. The next area is female entrepreneurs, and the last area would be non-tariff barriers and shipping across borders.
On the first one, I'm just going to give you an example. I was on the airplane last night flying in from Saint John. I sat next to a business member, and he said the challenge for many Canadian businesses is difficulty getting access to capital. He said that many Canadian banks do not want to invest in some of the higher-risk companies, because, as you know, EDC works specifically at mitigating risk. Now they're going to foreign investors, and he gave the example, Madam Glenn, that BDC charges an interest rate of around 8% for that specific sector versus a Canadian bank, which is much lower, so I'm wondering if you can speak to that, specifically about the access to capital on the cash flow side. Also, for businesses to expand, they need access to capital, and 8% interest can be a little high.