Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  They could be some of the means used to deal with the situation. With tax credits, money flows, because people are able to immediately change their process. Access to venture capital is also a tool. In its most recent budget, Quebec set aside $1.7 billion to deal with the lack o

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  In our case, our sector invests more than $6 billion every year in R and D. That's very significant. The sector is growing faster than the national economy. The pay rates in our industry are about 50% higher than in the rest of the economy. We're the demonstration that an R and D

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  I agree.

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  There will clearly be a fallout. However, do I know what might be done to resolve the problem? That is another matter, but the large companies in our sector create a whole ecosystem of smaller businesses around themselves. As Terry stated, they operate in a collaborative mode. We

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  In our industry, we're a bit of two minds about that. We have some issues with the patent regime in the U.S. Our whole ICT industry down there is suffering, so in that sense the Canadian regime is better. On the copyright side, we have a copyright act that predates the Internet

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  I would say that we've touched on a number of aspects, but the big-picture one is perhaps the most important of all. Let's start with the most important. The world will dig out of this recession, and the last thing you want is to look back a couple of years from now and say that

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  You've done a lot of the very good pieces. What's needed now is to say, okay, if the future is innovation and the knowledge economy, even in our traditional industries, how do we take a fresh look at that and wrap that together as a package? Little things will come up. Our tale

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  If you look at things like the environment, obviously because of our climate and our widely dispersed population, we have challenges in terms of energy consumption and so on. We know technology is the way to do that. It's not to cut back our standard of living. It's not to cut ba

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  Those are all elements that position Canada well to develop a strategy to improve its game, improve its position as the world digs itself out of this recession. As you pointed out, the U.S. is going to face very serious fiscal challenges that will affect its ability to treat ta

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  Yes and no. With regard to innovation and productivity, we are losing ground vis-à-vis the United States, and this has been the case for twenty years. People are confused but this is widening the prosperity gap between Canada and the United States. Given what is happening through

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  Ideally, you would like a mixture of domestic and foreign venture capital. There is an advantage. The first choice of our companies is to go to domestic venture capital, because the investors like to be close to their investments, and the investees like to be reasonably close t

Subcommittee on Canadian Industrial Sectors committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Bernard Courtois and I am President of the Information Technology Association of Canada. I would be pleased to answer your questions and exchange with you in either French or English. I will make a few opening remarks and introduce to you the

Industry committee  Obviously we have the carriers, the ISPs--just about everybody involved in lawful access--within our membership, so we've been following that file very closely. I will just mention on the centres of excellence, though, that I'm certainly aware of projects that are going to be g

Industry committee  Yes, our industry spends a lot of money on providing expert technical advice for that. In many other jurisdictions the government clearly funds that capability, and obviously we will need to do that in this country.

Industry committee  Yes, I would say the same thing. We went through a similar experience in terms of satellite signals. We need a package. We need the law to give the right protection and we need enforcement to send the right signal. One of the advantages that a law, rightly done, can do is that in