Thank you all for having us here today. We're truly honoured to be with you this afternoon.
I'll share a little bit about the Federation of Portuguese Canadian Business & Professionals. We've been around since December 7, 1981. I share a birthday with the federation, though I won't tell you if I was born before or after 1981. We are a volunteer-driven, not-for-profit organization. Our membership consists of a number of Portuguese professionals and businesses throughout Canada.
We have done many projects with different communities. We have a keen interest in the development and advancement of higher education within our community. That's really one of our main focuses. We have various networking functions that we do throughout the year. We have a gala that takes place every year, at which we give scholarships. These are supported by businesses, both here and in Portugal.
Recently, Matthew Correia and I were in the Azores. We were able to secure a scholarship from the University of the Azores. For a number of years now we have obtained scholarships from Universidade NOVA in mainland Portugal. We also support and encourage academic excellence in any way possible.
We do a number of events surrounding youth. Mr. Correia was the first leader of the student advisory committee, which began last year. We've started doing networking events to try to advance the opportunities for students to network in our community and outside of our community as well.
We have about 250 members with a roster of over 500 businesses in the Luso-Canadian community. Throughout its history, the federation has always partnered with different organizations. We are members of the Greater Toronto Business Alliance, which was formed in 2008. Within that group is the Italian Chamber of Commerce of Ontario, the Toronto Chinese Business Association, the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce, and of course the federation. In the past year, we have also begun networking and partnering with the British Chamber of Commerce and various Latin American chambers of commerce. We did an event last year. We are looking to do another event so that we can expand our networking opportunities and the support that we can give to professionals and businesses within our community and outside of our community.
With regard to our scholarship program, as of this year we have grown our numbers to 40 scholarships that we were able to present at our gala, which I hope you will all attend on March 24. We have donated over $1 million through the generosity of the businesses in our community.
In the most recent year, we have also been very active in developing and enhancing our networking opportunities internationally. We had a group come in from Santarém, Portugal, the NERSANT Group. We signed a protocol with them in order to be able to support them to advance and enhance their opportunities for business development here. They're willing to provide the same support for our membership in Portugal. We had a group come from Aveiro as well, with the same mission. We are in talks about signing a protocol with them as well.
More recently, Mr. Correia and I met with SDEA, a society for business development in the Azores, with the same incentives. We have definitely taken a lot of steps, even more so in recent times, to try to expand and develop the opportunities for business development.
I wanted to try to bring one of our members who is running a business involved in international trade, but unfortunately we were not able to do that. I run a business, but I'm a lawyer, and we don't do international trade.
There are a couple of things that we thought we could bring as suggestions. I noticed that in CETA you have now made the rules a lot easier for certain professionals as far as accreditation is concerned. I think that's a huge step in the right direction. I think more advancements need to be made in that regard. Speaking from personal experience, I can say that the education in Europe is absolutely superb. I know that first-hand, because as I child I studied in Europe for a number of years.
I also returned as an adult to do one of my years of law school in Europe. The programs there are fantastic.
With regard to exports to Europe, I noticed—