Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the standing committee, for allowing me to present to you today regarding the G-20 Young Entrepreneur Summit that took place from June 20 to 22, 2010 in Toronto.
The Canadian Youth Business Foundation was pleased to host this inaugural international summit, and we were delighted when the Government of Canada endorsed the summit.
The Canadian Youth Business Foundation, or CYBF, for those of you who don't know us, is Canada's go-to place for young entrepreneurs aged 18 to 34. We're a national charity and have an extremely effective, efficient, and internationally recognized model for investing in young people with big dreams and great ideas.
Our model is based on that used by the Prince’s Youth Business International, the not-for-profit organization led by His Royal Highness Prince Charles, and is recognized by the Kauffman Foundation out of the U.S.A., which is the largest foundation in the world dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship.
CYBF provides both character-based seed financing and, even more importantly, volunteer business mentors for start-ups across the country every year. In this past year, CYBF financed 600 start-ups from coast to coast to coast.
We offer an impressive and consistent return on investment and are proving ourselves capable of rapidly expanding Canada's pool of successful young entrepreneurs. For example, over the past three years, even through a major worldwide recession, our loan-loss rate has managed to remain at or just under 6%--this is for unsecured credit.
This year I had the pleasure of chairing the first ever G-20 Young Entrepreneur Summit in Toronto. The idea to host such a summit during the G-20 meetings started in July of 2009 when CYBF represented Canada at the first G-8 Young Business Summit in Stresa, Italy. The Stresa summit provided a unique opportunity for young entrepreneurs to meet, exchange ideas with like-minded business leaders from G-8 countries, and to establish international networks and partnerships.
The shared goal of the organizations and attendees at the Stresa summit was to establish an annual young entrepreneur summit that would be recognized as an ongoing component of the annual G-8 or G-20 leaders' meetings. We felt that it was important to expand this international discussion of youth entrepreneurship to the G-20 for the same reason that it has become the premier forum for collaboration between governments on global economic issues: it is small enough to be manageable but diverse enough to reflect the challenges facing countries all over the world.
In light of the recent recession, the slow pace of economic growth around the world, and our focus on championing youth entrepreneurship, we decided that the theme of our summit would be “Entrepreneurship=Recovery=Jobs”. With our summit theme chosen, CYBF worked very closely with our international partners to identify the issues of shared concern, and these concerns are reflected in the communiqué included in the packages that have been distributed to you today.
This communiqué reflects a remarkable degree of consensus around five key issues that either discourage young people from launching new businesses or limit their success for growth. These issues are: insufficient access to funding; excessive regulation and taxation; the need for a more entrepreneurial culture; inefficient coordination of available support; and the need for entrepreneurial education in schools and universities.
On the last day of our summit, the participants jointly signed and delivered the communiqué to the Honourable Tony Clement, Canada's Minister of Industry, and to the Honourable John Manley, the president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, who was the chairman of the G-20 business summit, better known as the B-20, which was held on June 25 and 26. I was honoured to be invited to attend the meeting of the B-20 on June 26 to present the communiqué to the world business leaders in person.
While the communiqué is aimed at G-20 leaders and emphasizes the role of governments in providing a policy environment that encourages entrepreneurship, young entrepreneurs throughout G-20 countries are working with our national governments to address the need to encourage a shift to a culture of entrepreneurship among their countries' young people.
During the Toronto summit, we decided to forge a continuing G-20 young entrepreneur alliance. We met for the first working session of this alliance this past November 7 through 9 in the Republic of Korea. I serve on the executive committee of this new alliance. The organizing members of this alliance either are organizations that must work to foster youth entrepreneurship or are organizations that are led by young entrepreneurs. These organizations must also have a national footprint and have a positive working relationship in both the public and private sectors.
I am pleased to say that CYBF takes its relationships with government and the private sector partners seriously and is seen as a collaborative partner by all. During our first working session, we signed a charter document outlining how we would encourage the G-20 process to include entrepreneurship in its agenda moving forward. We also committed to sharing best practices with each member nation in order to help build supportive entrepreneurial environments worldwide.
Over the next year--until the next G-20 leaders' summit--the new G-20 young entrepreneur alliance will be building a new platform for collaboration among organizations supporting entrepreneurship. We'll be collecting information about what is working and what is not in each country, and we'll be helping each other and governments do a better job of inspiring and enabling young people to be potential entrepreneurs.
My colleagues in France have informed me that they will host the next G-20 Young Entrepreneurs Summit in November 2011 in Cannes. As well, my colleagues in Mexico are working with their government in preparation for a 2012 G-20 Young Entrepreneurs Summit.
Members of the standing committee at this table, I know you'll be very supportive of entrepreneurship within your committees, and I hope that you will also be supportive of this historic new G-20 Young Entrepreneur Alliance that had its birth right here in Canada. It is something that all of us should be very proud of. Canadians took a leadership role in creating an international platform where young entrepreneurs, who will be the job creators, revenue generators, and community sustainers of the future, can bring their ideas regarding ongoing economic and business success to the G-20 leaders' attention and hopefully see some of those ideas embraced.
Young entrepreneurs have the potential, creativity, and energy to launch new businesses and create jobs that will power our economic recovery and growth. And not just in our economy here in Canada: young entrepreneurs will be the drivers of economic recovery in developed and developing nations.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the legacy of the G-20 Young Entrepreneur's Summit held in Toronto this year. It's something that I believe Canadians should be very proud of, as I am. Positive things did get accomplished during the G-20 summit period, and I am pleased to have been able to give you this first-hand report of that positive accomplishment.
Thank you for your invitation to be part of this today.