Absolutely. Thanks for the question.
The short answer is, yes, we are starting to see the investment. Those dollars flow down the hill into everything from start-ups to enterprises, through avenues such as BDC, which does such a good job of supporting start-ups writ large, with entrepreneurship across the citizenry, not only for veterans. That money is being deployed and it's starting to move.
On the veteran context and buy Canada, we would love to see “buy veteran”. To show and prove some incentives for working with companies that are veteran-run, veteran-owned and sovereign would be a boon for that economic development question. We often work hand in hand. Frankly, we fought in the same wars and we do the same training, and we commiserate and hang out after service as well, with all of our Five Eyes and allied friends and our former colleagues.
A number of countries have invested in this space, which goes to my earlier point about this being equally an economic policy and a veteran policy. Our friends and partners down in the U.S. have the SBA, the U.S. Small Business Administration. That has a very dedicated avenue and some pathways for veterans. Capital support is immediate through their economic development agency, not through their veterans affairs. Even military spouses have familial avenues for starting businesses and supporting businesses. That's one highlight that I think we can learn a lot from and implement quickly.
As for numbers for my preparation for this meeting, $1.6 billion has been deployed through that program over the last 20 years. They see a return on investment of almost $1 trillion of economic impact a year from that. It's a return on investment for the Canadian population, which puts a lot of money, time and effort into training soldiers, who can then come out and leverage those learnings, that knowledge and that risk-taking, which is a large part of entrepreneurship.