Industry committee  That is correct. I'm not sure, candidly, if it was in the original BDC act of 1995 or it was a Treasury Board guideline issued at the same time. But certainly, since 1995, the thinking of the bank and the request of the shareholders—and I'm not sure in which piece of paper it w

Industry committee  That's correct.

Industry committee  That's exactly right. What we're trying to do is eliminate one layer of paperwork. We will issue one loan to Futurpreneur Canada. They will then on-lend, and we will trust their due diligence. We will train them, if they have to be trained, to do it properly. Right now, as you

Industry committee  We are expected to have a return, on average, over the whole portfolio. At the present time the portfolio is about $19 billion. Young start-ups are a bit of a difficult environment to be in, so I don't expect much of a return on that particular part of the portfolio.

Industry committee  That is exactly right. These young entrepreneurs are building businesses that over the course of time will hopefully grow bigger businesses and will be good for the country. That's the reason we are focusing on helping young entrepreneurs.

Industry committee  It is correct. We are being asked to ensure that our return on equity is greater than our long-term cost of capital, which we've always done.

Industry committee  It's important to understand that we only do term lending, which is like project financing of a long-term nature on the lending side, which is the bulk of our activity. Every entrepreneur in this country deals with a bank in terms of operating line and chequing account, and so on

Industry committee  That is correct. We are a development bank, but we do expect to be repaid, so we will take a layer of risk higher than chartered banks, usually, but we will also price for risk which enables us, obviously, to end up with a positive number at the end of the year.

Industry committee  Thank you.

Industry committee  Sure. Generally our risk appetite is higher than that of the banks. We tend to take a layer of risk that is not something they're comfortable with. We will charge, we will price for that risk. We also are trying very hard to do what's called a hybrid instrument like quasi-equity

Industry committee  We've been very proud of our track record. We're helping an awful lot of entrepreneurs every year. There's not a single client event that I go to where people won't say they're glad we were there because when the going was tough, we stayed with them, helped them during the recess

Industry committee  No, we don't. Agriculture is handled by a farm credit. That's their bailiwick.

Industry committee  I'd like to respond to that, if I may. We have an awful lot of young entrepreneurs who need financing to start a business. There are organizations very much capable of doing that and I'm going to refer to what used to be called the Canadian Youth Business Foundation. At the prese

Industry committee  I am absolutely with you on that. What we're trying to remove is ourselves, because at the present time the law is such that they do the work and then they have to come to us, because we're not allowed to lend through them. As BDC, we actually then have to meet with every entrepr

Industry committee  We literally do this for, honestly, the greater good of the country, because they are small transactions. The costs involved....That's why we want to remove ourselves.