Thank you for the question.
When the program was put together, I think companies were probably making better profits. The program is now 20 to 25 years old. Now we're facing not only a stronger Canadian dollar, but we're facing companies that are doing business in India, China, Brazil, Germany, and France, where research and development costs are much lower than in Canada. I think the program in itself is good. But in order to make sure that Canadian companies have all the incentives to continue to do the R and D here, we have to help them out.
Right now, we, just the 22 companies in the coalition, are sitting on about $2.5 billion of earned but unclaimed tax credits. Between the 22 of us we do $3.5 billion per year of R and D, but we can't continue just to accumulate the tax credits. This is why I think we're losing some of our competitive edge.