My view on this is that the world is a competitive place, especially when it comes to data and the public Internet. The best way to do it is to release as much data as possible so that we can create as many competitive firms as possible here in Canada. If there are other firms coming from other jurisdictions that are already building momentum around data that have been released by government--for instance, in the United States--those companies are going to come in and demolish whatever opportunity might have been available for a Canadian start-up, because you have a giant behemoth coming from wherever they're coming from, and they already know how to do it. They know the process. They know the delivery mechanism. They know the distribution channel. They have all their supply chain arrangements completed.
To me, when you talk about resources like things that you dig up from the ground, it's a different economic model. In the information age and on the Internet, there's no stopping competition. The best thing you can do is create an economic centre where you get that innovation that truly drives it.
Why is Silicon Valley so successful? Where are all the other information technology firms growing in the United States? It's hard to find large companies outside of Silicon Valley that have had the explosive growth that some of these Internet firms have had. They go from zero to billions of dollars of valuation. It's because they create that innovative nucleus.
By making available the assets that can be mined by these information technology companies, to use your metaphor, and by doing lots of it, you create companies that can then be successful, and we can export our companies over to other countries that are doing those things and we can start to compete.
That's definitely my view.