Finance committee  I think the primary sort of feedback we got from our membership is around increasing the speed of the program. The general feedback we've heard is general support for the direction, in terms of more direct grants for firms involved in R and D. What I also think should be explored

Finance committee  Absolutely, and that's something we've heard from a lot of our enterprises, especially the SMEs, the small and medium-sized enterprises.

Finance committee  In surveys we've done with our membership on the top policy issues, investment in transportation infrastructure and problems associated with transportation have been consistently our number one issue over the past five years. At a macro level there are studies that have shown—the

Finance committee  In a number of our key industry clusters, it's quite severe. We recently heard, as an example, from our food and beverage cluster. A lot of people might not know that Toronto has North America's second-largest food and beverage processing cluster. What many of our members are fin

Finance committee  With regard to the Toronto region economy and what our comparative advantage is, we clearly see from the benchmarking we've done that we have some of the leading industry clusters in North America. For example, in food and beverage, health and life sciences, auto parts, and aeros

Finance committee  Absolutely. We absolutely support the types of partnerships Mr. Rothschild described. A lot of the work we do is to help businesses connect with those types of programs. That approach definitely could work within the Toronto region, through our universities. Part of what we're tr

Finance committee  That was not presented to us in our consultation.

Finance committee  That's correct, yes.

Finance committee  We think it needs to be a balanced approach. We think investments in infrastructure will pay huge benefits in the long term and also in the short term. We would see that as a priority for the government. Ensuring in the overall balance of spending that it is done wisely, obviousl

Finance committee  Lastly, at the same time that the government looks for efficiencies in the delivery of government services, we must ensure we don't weaken our federal export trade support infrastructure. A successful strategy for Canada must support Canadian firms that wish to go global, and we

Finance committee  Good afternoon. My name is Juan Gomez. I'm the director of policy for the Toronto Board of Trade. Thank you for inviting me to appear this afternoon. Founded in 1845, the Toronto Board of Trade is Canada's largest chamber of commerce, connecting 10,000 members and more than 20