Thank you both for being here. I said in our intermission that by having you in the same room for more than this, together you could solve a lot of problems in Canadian manufacturing. One of the things we do is we bring people together. That's what we do as a committee and as a government.
I was at the Outdoor Farm Show, and thanks, Leah, for getting that lined up. Geof Gray took me around. I saw the manufacturing. There are a couple of things about rural manufacturing that we haven't included in our study. There's the economic development piece of manufacturing in the rural areas. These companies are often the best employers. They're stopping people from leaving their communities and going to the big city. They're keeping families together. They're using Canadian steel. I asked every manufacturer, “Where do you get your steel?” It's all from Canada, which is great for the Soo and other steel-producing areas. They're using Canadian everything in what they're doing.
But I've said, you're already doing great. I've said that manufacturing is not dead in rural Canada. In fact, it's so alive, and nobody knows about it. Part of our study is to get that out, if you can help us.
I'm taking too much of my time, but I wanted to get to the paperwork. One of the things that everybody said at the farm show was that they have these small companies, but they don't have people to do the SR and ED applications. They don't have people to do the export documents. All of the paper that the government puts in their way is a real trouble. Particularly on SR and ED, everybody said, “That doesn't work. We've given up on it. We're too small. They ignore us. We spend money on it and we don't have successful applications. SR and ED does not work for small business.” Everybody said that.
Could you say something for our report?