Those are very good points. I will say that I do mentor companies myself, from here in Halifax to Calgary. I work with District Ventures in Calgary, which is led by Arlene Dickinson in Montreal. I help companies.
The struggle we have beyond the capital issue and beyond the talent is with the discipline and the mentorship that these companies need. Once you educate venture capitalists about agri-food, about the fact that you need to be patient and you can't go in and out in two years and get your money, as you can in clean tech or fintech, then you're in good shape, but also these entrepreneurs need the support and the connection.
The one thing that District Ventures has done that I thought was really valuable is to connect and partner with retailers to test products in a real setting, which has allowed some companies to be successful. In Halifax, at Dalhousie we actually partnered with the Rotman School of business at the University of Toronto to establish what we call the “creative destruction lab”.
This lab is a model that has been replicated I think four or five times across the country, including in Calgary, at UBC, in Montreal and for us here in Halifax. It's a nine-month program providing a lot of mentorship to entrepreneurs. It provides a lot of discipline as well. We need something like this for agri-food as soon as possible. If there's one recommendation I would make, it's to make a CDL à la agri-food. Right now, there's nothing.