I would suggest that for any tax expenditure like this, we should look at the public goal first. If the public goal is to support struggling tech companies to get out of the gates in Canada, we should look at the whole toolbox we have and ask if tax expenditure is the best and most cost-effective way for Canadians to support that.
If that is a public goal, maybe there's a different way. Maybe those companies are struggling to get highly skilled workers. Maybe their barriers are different than simply the compensation issue of those workers. We need to identify the goal and those barriers, and then the toolbox we have that's going to be the most targeted way to effectively achieve that goal.
It may or may not be stock options. I doubt it would be, to be honest. We need to look at the actual challenges that those businesses are facing, figure out what they are, and then track what works and what doesn't.