Finance committee  I think Steve has really talked about the purpose of the changes. We're here today with proposed changes to make this program more accessible to more businesses, of more types for more uses. That's really what it is, so the purpose is to expand availability of the program for more companies to be able to access it.

Finance committee  Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Steve.

Finance committee  The shared risk is 85%. Essentially what a bank does is once they decide they're going to offer the loan, if they decide to use the program they register the loan with the program. Once they've done that, should there be losses on the loan, the bank needs to cover 85% of those losses, and the government covers the 15%.

Finance committee  Thank you. We apologize for this error. We will ask our colleagues to correct this.

Finance committee  Go ahead, Steve.

Finance committee  I'm going to turn to my colleague, Steve Watton, who's the manager of the program. He'll explain the specifics in terms of the budget amount and the amount of funds we believe have been estimated as going back into the economy, in terms of private sector lending as a result of these amendments.

Finance committee  Right. Sorry, if I could just add, it's not a COVID relief measure. It is a program that has been in place, as I mentioned earlier, for a very long time, and what we are doing now is modernizing the program. I would note though, in terms of start-ups and businesses in their first year of operation—and I'll ask Steve Watton to confirm this—my understanding is that between 2014 and 2019, which is the period of the last comprehensive review, which is public for this program, that approximately 60% of the loans were given to start-ups and to businesses in their first year of operation.

Finance committee  Thank you very much. We're pleased to be able to be speaking to the committee today about Canada small business financing program. The Canada small business financing program is a statutory program. It helps small businesses access financing. Under the program, the government shares the risk with financial institutions in order to encourage lending.

Industry committee  You make a very important point. Really what's happened is these regulations have been developed all on their own under different pieces of legislation that all came into force at different times. That's where we have all the different dates. The question was asked earlier about how many regulations we have.

Industry committee  I think it's safe to say that the cabinet directive provides a framework for everyone to understand how they're supposed to develop and then review regulations. One thing we see—I'll speak to the effectiveness point for a moment—is that we have legislation that in some cases can be quite prescriptive about the type of regulation you can have.

Industry committee  You're absolutely right. Effective, though, in the concept of government regulation, is a much bigger concept.

Industry committee  There are more than 100.

Industry committee  First of all, yes, the numbers we have really are from Statistics Canada, and that is just the percentage of our small and medium-sized enterprises that export. We need to remember that the vast majority of small and medium-sized businesses that we have in this country are really, again, in local communities, whether they are restaurants, lodging or apparel shops.

Industry committee  In fact, the reason that the sectors for the six strategy tables were selected was that we believed these were high-growth sectors for Canada's economy. We particularly want to focus on growing companies in those sectors and moving them into export markets. What we know about what helps companies succeed on the export market is that they have to have sufficient scale.

Industry committee  When it comes to exporting, what we understand is that the top issue is finding the opportunities to scale, and that really helps them succeed on the international market. When it comes to regulatory issues, this is something that the trade commissioner service is well equipped to help our companies understand before they get into export markets, so that they understand what they may be faced with in the local market.