My comment about IFIT and NRCan was basically about the fact that a lot of money is given out to different jurisdictions and companies. I think if they looked at their record—and I'm just guessing, as I have no idea if this is real or not because I haven't investigated it—I would have to guess that a vast percentage of the money is handed out to the larger multinational corporations because they have staff who write proposals. We don't have that ability.
We run very lean and mean, so we don't have a specific person who does that, and I think that's what I'm referring to. If government really looked at what's happening, you're going to see that companies like Brian Fehr's company, our company, the gentleman from Quebec's company, family companies, are the ones who really push hard. We're the innovators. We're the ones who are always looking at creating opportunities.
I'm not picking on the larger corporations; they are necessary. They are good to have in the role. We need a healthy forest industry for all of us to be successful; however, it is skewed to one side. We find it very difficult for how many proposals we have put in that we have never been recognized and have never gotten anything. It's very frustrating to the point where we won't do it because it take a lot of time and energy to do.
Government needs to understand their audience and needs to hit the cross-section of size of companies. We have companies here in the Kootenays that are employing six people with 3,000 metres a year of volume. Those are extraordinary numbers, and I will guarantee you that that gentleman has never even heard of IFIT or NRCan. That's the sad part of the state of affairs when it comes to me from the government's perspective of what government needs to do to promote that, and maybe government needs to recognize that there needs to be an advocate for these smaller companies, because it is so difficult for them to access funding that is out there, and then the funding gets swallowed up by the big corporations because they have people already writing the proposals that are put together.
I hope I answered the question.