Industry committee  The number was 6,000 between 1995 and 2012, between the U.S. and the European patent offices. In Canada we have about 5,400 patents that we've filed. In the last five years we averaged about 650. Canada is a country of second filing. We probably file more than most companies do

Industry committee  Correct.

Industry committee  Mr. Chair and honourable members, good morning, and thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee. RIM is a proud Canadian company, founded in 1984, and our first BlackBerry was introduced in 1999, creating a whole new way to communicate. Our products spawned a glo

Human Resources committee  That's the great thing about the tech sector. The size of a community doesn't matter. It's a great equalizer. If you look at Kitchener—Waterloo, Waterloo, when school is in session, is only about 120,000 people, and the whole area is a little under half a million. It's creating

Human Resources committee  To be honest with you, I don't know why it has slowed down.

Human Resources committee  Yes. Labour market opinions, where we need to get someone in, a temporary foreign worker, relatively quickly to work on a project. In fact, we've tried to keep on most of the LMOs we've hired and have them become Canadian citizens afterwards because of their high scholastic talen

Human Resources committee  No.

Human Resources committee  You make a very good point. It's one of the problems we're having. We're finding that people aren't upgrading their devices quite quickly enough. They're holding on to them for too long. It's a good problem and it's a bad problem, as well. We've definitely had some challenges in

Human Resources committee  I'm an old guy at RIM. There is some element of that.

Human Resources committee  Having experienced working in different countries, Canada is a great place to do business. The tax rate, while it could always be lower, is also very advantageous. Some of the changes made regarding R and D, especially as that relates to large corporations, was a little bit diff

Human Resources committee  I can tell you, just from the Waterloo example, that the answer would be less than 100%. We have Microsoft. Google has set up shop. We have a number of U.S. firms that are stealing the talent away and moving them right to Silicon Valley upon graduation.

Human Resources committee  Sure. Our facility in Bedford, just outside of Halifax, has been an overwhelming success, and not only because of the research institutions like Saint Mary's and Dalhousie and others in the area. We find that retention rates are excellent in Nova Scotia. In fact, they're far belo

Human Resources committee  Yes. All the talent has been from Nova Scotia, from the Maritimes, from New Brunswick and other areas.

Human Resources committee  Sure. It's an investment in people's futures. In Ontario, the program is $3,000 per credit for co-op. We pay a fairly substantial salary of anywhere between $45,000 and $60,000 for a co-op student, which is a heck of a lot better than I made when I graduated from school. So the g

Human Resources committee  Just to echo some of the previous comments that were made and to address the first part of your question, as in all problems there's never an easy solution. It takes a whole bunch of different pieces to put it together. If I'm able to back you up a bit, part of the problem for