Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to all of the witnesses.
Thank you for the good work all of you are doing.
I'd like to ask three questions.
My first, for whomever would like to comment, is on the Conference Board of Canada's latest report on innovation performance. Their report card gave Canada a “D” in innovation. That's our topic today: research and innovation. The Conference Board explained the grade as follows:
...Canada remains near the bottom of its peer group on innovation, ranking 13th among 16 peer countries...It performed poorly on most of the 21 indicators.
I won't go on, but I'm sure you're all familiar with the Conference Board's report.
Would anyone like to comment on why Canada is doing so poorly when there are so many initiatives in place already?
Mr. Patry, would you like to tackle that?