As a preface to all this, the action plan for women entrepreneurs brought together a number of initiatives that were in existence in a range of departments. One of the very big pieces was a piece for the Business Development Bank of Canada that had $700 million of funds that they were going to make available over three years to finance women-owned businesses.
The tiny part that Status of Women Canada has is miniscule in the context of the action plan.
This being said, Status of Women Canada plays an important role. There is an interdepartmental committee where we make sure that the voice of women business owners is heard across the various business development and economic agencies.
To give a bit of momentum to this we have had some calls for proposals where we specifically sought projects that explored the barriers for women business owners. All these projects started in maybe the last 18 months or so, so they're in their fairly early phases but we hope the information this will bring to light will be useful to our colleagues in the economic development agencies and they can adapt and adjust their programs, because that's where the money is.