Industry committee  No. Just in terms of start-ups, we have a start-up loan of up to $150,000 as well that has been used particularly in the manufacturing sector. We've had quite a few—1,800 transactions in manufacturing start-ups in the last 10 years.

Industry committee  Yes. The last legislative changes to BDC were to enable us to work with such entities as Futurpreneur, and we're able to co-investment with them. The relationship is working really well. It's for smaller loans. It's a bit of a matching, where they put in money and we provide some money.

Industry committee  The relationship is working really well, and the risk profile is very positive. Our experience is very positive and we're happy. It enables us to reach a community that goes beyond our footprint.

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to begin by commending the committee on its study of Canada's manufacturing sector. There can be no disagreement that manufacturing is a strategic sector for economic development. Manufacturing activities are the economic driver for many regions and communities in Canada.

Public Accounts committee  Seventy per cent of investment in venture capital is in the ICT sector. That's the industry norm. The funds of funds have some specificity in terms of areas of focus. HarbourVest is an ICT fund. Kensington has an ICT and a clean tech objective. Teralys has an allocation for a life science fund.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. We can track the performance of businesses and their lack of performance. Up till now there have been some successes, like Shopify, which was in the portfolio of one of the funds. That business was able to have a liquidity event. Up till now, four companies have failed.

Public Accounts committee  That is the objective of the program. I think that the selection of the funds of funds was done well. I think that the funds that are receiving funding at this time have a good investment team. The return on investments this year is higher than 5%. When we launched the program or even when we performed the strategic analysis at the BDC, it was less than 5%.

Public Accounts committee  I would suggest that there's very little late-stage money available in Canada. Fifty per cent of the money going into the late stage is coming from American funds. The size of funds in Canada is pretty small, so even the stages are much smaller in Canada. The size of cheques going into the later stage are half the money that an American company would typically have.

Public Accounts committee  Less than that.

Public Accounts committee  We track that investment as a VCAP program, issue shares in lieu of injection of capital, and report it separately. It gets rolled up in BDC capital which gets rolled up in BDC, and we report it as a separate segment of the BDC operation.

Public Accounts committee  We'll be tracking investment and the return of capital. The objective is to return more capital than we receive.

Public Accounts committee  The Government of Canada provides capital as we request. We only requested some capital to initiate the program, and we'll be doing a capital call some time in the next year or so.

Public Accounts committee  It would be $250 million out of the $400 million.

Public Accounts committee  In terms of funds-of-funds investment funds, investors participate at the annual meeting of all investors in the funds. At those meetings, the fund goes through each one of their invested companies and reports progress against the original intention or their original strategy. BDC and other investors go through all of the companies under the fund portfolio and all of the fund performance under the VCAP.

Public Accounts committee  Exactly. Each investor in the fund of funds, that fund of funds would invest in funds; if that investor is, for example, invested in Teralys investment funds, that investor would have a line of sight on all of the underlying portfolios.