Remember, in the mandate of the Jenkins panel, they asked for recommendations that were net zero in additional spending. So Jenkins was asked to move resources around within a fixed pot. If there were substantial additional resources, leaving SR and ED the same and putting more resources in another direction could be useful. In the work that it did, Jenkins found that the SR and ED was one of the most generous tax incentives in the world, and yet it's very difficult to attribute changed behaviour in research innovation using that tax mechanism. They didn't recommend abandoning the mechanism. They recommended adjusting the balance between the tax credit and the direct spend. And that's the recommendation we think would find merit in the research and development ecosystem we have in Canada today.
On October 29th, 2012. See this statement in context.