At NRC, one of our roles, of course, is to support innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises, so we have a number of mechanisms to do that. One of them is our industrial research assistance program, which allows companies to come to NRC to provide a business case for an investment, and we have a contribution program that allows us to make a direct financial contribution to support those investments, which has to be shared with a matching contribution from the company itself. Across NRC, we have over 240 industry technology advisors who are in the field, who meet with these companies on a day-to-day basis, who support them not only with our contribution program but by providing business advice and strategic advice, helping them understand markets, and where the market growth can be not only domestically but globally. That is one mechanism that NRC has to support these companies, but the IRAP advisors in the field will also direct them to the parts of NRC that have research facilities or expertise that can support them as well.
In the context of the program that we're discussing today, if there is a software company that has potential or that has a technology for language translation, over the last 10 years we have built a world-class team.... I'll just say NRC's role in the program might be different from other programs because we are a research and technology organization. I can't stress enough how long it takes to build a team such as we have. We are very proud of what we've done over the last 10 years. We started with virtually nothing and in 10 years have built a team that has been able to develop technologies that are really, truly world class, and in some cases best in the world.
In reference to Madam Michaud's question, a significant part of our investment, of course, is in the salaries, in building these teams. Seventy per cent of our expenditures are salaries because we're a research provider and we actually have our own teams. We have an open door in order for companies to come in and discuss opportunities with us. We have programs that would allow us to build collaborative projects to help specific companies. What we expect is that we share the cost and share the risk of developing those technologies. But there are a number of ways for NRC to support these small companies, and currently one of our dreams is to have global domination of various industries, especially in the information technology sector.