Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup for his question.
Yes, that should be done immediately. We are referring to non-profit economic organizations, as I just mentioned in my speech. He spoke of Chaudière-Appalaches and Rimouski; we could just as easily be talking about Gaspé, Trois-Rivières or Amqui. A group of organizations supported start-ups or businesses wanting to market new products or technologies. These organizations also helped companies with research. When you own a small or medium-sized enterprise you do not necessarily have the staff or the means to conduct research and development and for that you must rely on other organizations most of the time
I have a very concrete example in mind. In my riding, a clean firelog was developed, using a special process, that results in significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions and, at the same time, uses forestry waste. The company in question—not a very large firm—was unable to conduct the research in Canada and it had to be done in Finland. We have to realize that had we invested in research and development, the research could have been done here and probably much more quickly. That is a very concrete example.
For small or medium-sized companies, it is extremely important that non-profit economic organizations be subsidized and capable of continuing to work with them. That will be the key to success for our companies, especially in times of major economic crisis when competition is even fiercer.