Obviously I can only speak from our perspective, from iNovia's perspective, and my own.
I could add a quote, which is that on average, North American venture capital funds are not returning capital. Yet the few that are have created Google, have created Apple, have created every single technology company that we're using even in this room today. Therefore, without venture capital, you do not have that type of innovation that can come to bear.
Canada is late. We have lost ground with Nortel and with RIM to a certain extent. We need to up our game and we need to be more active in supporting our companies. More than 300,000 Canadians are based in the valley. More than 40 VCs are Canadian but working for U.S-based valley funds.
So when I wake up in the morning and look for the next entrepreneur to back, I look at the available capital that I have to fund these companies. It happens that, yes, the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and the Fonds d’action have been my biggest and best partners over the last 13 years.
From my perspective with regard to why we're delivering today, they've played a big role in that, and it is up to us to come up with backing the next generation of entrepreneurs in order to build these big businesses in Canada. If today you list the top 10 technology companies in Canada, you will notice that the majority of the capital raised by these companies is not from Canadian VC funds.