Thank you, Mr. Julian.
There are lots of ways the spend can go better, and can go smarter. The Jenkins report did mention--and it dovetails with our other recommendation about simplification--that it's a whole lot simpler for small businesses to base the SR and ED credit on labour-related costs than to do the plethora of record-tracking based on the proportionate use of their machinery and the like. So that just makes sense. If it's simpler, it costs them less to track it, it costs them less to have high-priced advisors to fill in the claims, and it gets the money to the people who need it to continue the innovation.
On the innovation front, the current spend stops too early. When you look at the term of scientific research and experimental development, it really is experimental. If there is a certainty of outcome, then the funding is denied. The vision is of smoking beakers and lab coats, but in actuality it's commercialization that drives jobs. It's taking that idea and making it into a product that gets sold to employ more people. That's what produces jobs.
The last point we made was that small private companies certainly have the most difficulty finding funding. We do an annual survey on credit availability, and it just confirms that there are no big surprises, that the smaller companies have more difficulty finding funding. And if they're looking for a longer-term type of funding, that's even more difficult to get.
So getting seed capital for a small company is really tough.