If I may, Mr. Chair, at the outset I'd like to talk about the superclusters infrastructure perspective. The clusters were brought about in the budget passed in 2016, and infrastructure was not part of that. They identified sectors, and infrastructure was not part of that. This year, they announced infrastructure, and we basically were given six weeks to do the work that others had taken two years to put together.
You had to produce your letter of intent, and then you had to guarantee $125 million in matching funds, which is absolutely not possible. That said, we still proceeded with the letter of intent. We hope to engage with government to see how they can address our issue there, because it's not possible to guarantee that kind of support when you have to build your consortia, identify the the project you want to invest in, and so on.
I think the superclusters have a lot of potential. At the same time, this creates a problem for some sectors, because it has to do with culture. For R and D you can spend the money, but you have to start with culture. You have to make sure the sector you're touching on meets the requirements of the clients. It has to be client-based. The consortia being built may not necessarily include all of the client base. For example, as I said in my presentation, provincial and municipal governments own billions of dollars of assets in construction, and the money they would spend cannot be accounted for in terms of matching funds. It's the construction industry that has to put up that money, and in many respects, it's not the innovation in itself that will come about that will serve them well.
I'll give you one example, if I may—