Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and committee, for an opportunity to address you this evening.
I would briefly like to state that SDTC was created by the Government of Canada as an arm's-length organization to bring to market clean technologies—clean air, climate change, clean water, and clean land—that contribute to the economy and the environment of Canada. We've built an entrepreneurial capacity, and fund projects with a consortium of companies that must contain at least one for-profit entity, and which prove out the technological viability of the technologies so they are available for commercialization by the private sector downstream of us.
We essentially operate much like an early stage venture capital company, providing made-in-Canada solutions to real world industry needs. This is evidenced by the fact that 80% of our consortia are led by the private sector, and 89% of the funded portfolio of 75 projects is comprised of SMEs. We are unusual in the substantial amount of leveraging of government funds that we have achieved, that is, in a 3:1 ratio. We have placed $169 million, as leveraged by $449 million, of which 60% is from the private sector. Early results from SDTC's funding show that Canada has the opportunity to be in a leadership position in the oil and gas sector, and the transportation, agriculture, and forestry sectors.
As for the issues that we see in front of us with this bill, unfortunately the breadth of it will compromise SDTC's ability to carry out its mandate. Historically, SDTC has operated under a strict regime in protecting its applicant information as proprietary and confidential—requirements that are, in fact, stipulated in our funding agreement with the government as a necessity, if applicants are to provide full and detailed information enabling us to select the best projects with the greatest potential for helping Canadians.
While there are some protections under the bill, SDTC would not be able to guarantee confidentiality to our clients, which at this stage in their development of their technologies is of high sensitivity in terms of public disclosure. As I mentioned, the leveraged funding that comes from the private sector is also made on the basis of an opportunity for future profit, which cannot be realized if the information is in the public domain. Therefore, the willingness of entrepreneurs to apply to SDTC and to provide the detail and quality of information that we would need to be able to assess them would be compromised as a result of this uncertainty, thereby significantly limiting SDTC's ability to select the best projects and to obtain leveraging of taxpayers' dollars from the private sector.
We, therefore, respectfully request that SDTC be supplied an exemption for this type of information, similar to that allowed for the Business Development Bank of Canada and EDC, where the law did recognize that they could not carry out their mandates without the ability to provide assurances of confidentiality. SDTC has provided, under non-disclosure agreements, due diligence information to BDC on some of our companies for downstream support.
The second issue is that the degree of sophistication required of SDTC to select technologies with high potential from over 2,800 companies, with some 57 different technology groupings, cannot be performed without detailed and confidential methodologies to screen and evaluate these opportunities, and the input and guidance of a wide range of highly skilled experts. Should these confidential methodologies, or the expert reviews, or even the names of the experts, be made available, it would enable lobbying of these experts and gaming of the process, all of which would affect the integrity of what is currently a highly objective, non-influenceable selection process.
Additionally, to provide benefits from SDTC's funding, we have developed a proprietary tool that contains confidential information from our applicants, enabling SDTC to focus on the areas of greatest return to Canada. This addresses the primary barriers to market and industry adoption. The results of this model, of course, are very widely available on the Internet and in presentations across the country, but we have trademarked the model. Therefore, we also request that SDTC's proprietary methodologies, and the expert reviews and their names, be exempted from the act. We also request that our scoring methodologies be kept confidential, so they may operate in an objective fashion and be protected from influence.