Status of Women committee  To answer the first question, yes, there's still a need to help women entrepreneurs with financial literacy.

Status of Women committee  Potentially yes. Certainly we've been focusing more on women. We haven't really been assessing the male level of financial literacy because we recognize this is a focus area for women, so let's do that with women. That answers your first question. In terms of access to capital

Status of Women committee  We have found that a key element to the success of the strategy so far has been to align with partners and regional partners. We're working with regional development agencies. In particular we do a lot of work with the CFDCs and partner with them. We run sessions that bring women

Status of Women committee  We do. We are a complementary lender. We are meant to fill gaps in the market that others don't fill. To me, because we don't do everything, it's important that they have key relationships with other financial partners to be able to sustain and grow their business. We will often

Status of Women committee  That's an interesting question. I must say I hadn't thought of that when I was coming here today. I think one of the big things that we have found is the the value of our just building awareness of who we are and what we do in the marketplace, honestly. Support for that is great

Status of Women committee  I don't know, but maybe my colleague Michelle does. You come at it from a different perspective than I do—more traditional. Maybe in terms of your world, you may have other suggestions.

Status of Women committee  Sure. I'd be happy to. Starting out we had allocated the $150,000, which we envisioned to be $50,000 per year. I can tell you that in the first year, we spent more than $150,000. Basically the focus of that was to build awareness and work with partners. We went out and did a num

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for having us here today. My name is Lesley Lawrence. I am the senior vice-president overseeing the financing and consulting activities in Ontario of the Business Development Bank of Canada. I have also championed the bank's initiati