Industry committee  I would just stress the importance of productivity in the service sector area. Because it's such a chunk of our economy, in order to get our productivity up to the growth rate of the ICT industry of about 7% or 8%, you'd have to increase service sector productivity by about 12%.

Industry committee  I don't think so. I think there's a realization there that we must adopt a very imaginative partnership strategy around the world if we're going to make this work. As I was saying, we can plug ourselves into nations around the world that Canadians have an affinity for in order to

Industry committee  If I may pick up on that point, we had one of our CEO round tables last week in Toronto. There were 100 CEOs from the manufacturing community gathered around, having what we call a kitchen table conversation to discuss what's happening in manufacturing these days. James Milway fr

Industry committee  Are you asking me to describe in general the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance?

Industry committee  That's right.

Industry committee  That's exactly what it means.

Industry committee  That's right. We drill down a little more into our explanation for that, but our recommendation there is to allow the same treatment for companies that are having losses in a particular year. In fact, that's when they need that tax credit the most. Your point is exactly what we

Industry committee  I think we have a situation where some things advance and other things get left behind, and you have to push those as well. So you're pulling a rug unevenly across the floor. In the last 26 years we've had three innovation policies from the federal government. It's a target that

Industry committee  If I might, that's very good. I think that what Canada has been doing thus far is pouring an awful lot of money into the research side, into research communities. But I think there is an equal measure we should be doing on commercialization and monetization. You don't really co

Industry committee  Yes. One of the ways CATA works is to partner with other organizations that have expertise in particular areas. We are working with some government agencies, especially the ones that can, as precisely as possible, define what these kids are going to be walking into in terms of fu

Industry committee  I think it would be very helpful if a clearinghouse was set up, as some businesses like IBM and Oracle and so on are doing in the United States, to share best practices in how you innovate in the service sector. It's just not done here at all. Schulich School of Business has a l

Industry committee  Let me add one more thing to that. We also have a women in technology, or WIT, program that's been working for about two years now. Its mission is to increase the awareness people have of the skills women have, to advance them further up the chain faster. So there are other res

Industry committee  In a service world, I don't see them as being a challenge at all. I see them as being partners. If we can't recognize them as partners, then we're going to lose, because the Chinese are busy graduating more honours students than North America is creating students. We have to take

Industry committee  It's an excellent question on an important point. We have found the shortage to be so bad that we are reaching now into the colleges and universities at the pre-graduate level to plug them into companies before they've even finished graduating. In fact, my own organization is b

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all committee members. This is a wonderful opportunity for us. CATA has 28,000 members. We've been in existence for 30 years. We cover all of Canada and cover every sector. Our goal this year is to raise our membership above 100,000. We're