The challenges are always different, because francophone entrepreneurs have less access to resources in French.
That said, the challenges in the Yukon are less than in other regions. The fact that we are a small community and are together in one place, has advantages, not just disadvantages.
In our work, we essentially depend on funds from the federal government. As we explained in our presentation, it is difficult to access private money in the Yukon, because our community is so small. So it is quite difficult for us to look for private investment for the services we provide today.
We hear about social finance and we are told that we have to move towards private investment, but that is a problem for us. Even though the Yukon is ranked third in Canada in terms of bilingualism, there are still only between 3,000 and 4,000 French-speakers in the territory, which is not a lot. So the private sector is not really inclined to invest money in our community.
Other challenges have to do with the access entrepreneurs have to certain services in French. For example, it is harder for entrepreneurs to take some kinds of training in French because it is not always offered in French.
Up to now, we have been faced with another challenge, but we recognize that things are beginning to change. Until now, we have not been able to provide services directly to entrepreneurs. Our funding did not allow us, for example, to help a francophone entrepreneur who asked us for help in preparing a business plan or the like. The only thing we could do was to direct that entrepreneur to an anglophone agency. But they came to see us because we are a francophone agency. It is crazy that we promote ourselves as being involved in economic development and in providing assistance to entrepreneurs, but we have to tell them that our funding does not really allow us to help them in a number of ways.