The program helps businesses in a number of ways. First, it helps them boost their productivity and compete with international companies in their sector. That makes them visible to major contractors. They can benefit from measures taken by major contractors, but they have to comply with the standards and meet their requirements.
We also help them with their export plans. Our colleagues in the regional export promotion agencies, which we call ORPEXes, design export plans with SMEs. They come to us to see if we can co-fund that, and we often do via the regional economic growth through innovation program, the REGI, which you mentioned, but the Government of Quebec also offers resources to help businesses, including loans that businesses have lots of time to repay. That gives them breathing room and the freedom to set up new production methods and explore export opportunities while managing the associated risk so it doesn't prevent them from being productive in the short term. We work with them for the long haul.
In Quebec, some of these businesses come back to us for help at different stages of growth. I'm sure that happens in the Atlantic provinces as well. There are a lot of great stories about companies that started out as micro-enterprises and are now big companies that export goods, are very resilient and have access to a diversified market.