Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
My first question is for Mr. Haj-Ahmad.
I very much liked the part of your presentation where you showed us slides that illustrated the run rate of these young companies that develop a new service or product. This requires a great deal of money, at several stages in the process. To my mind, it is comparable to the situation of entrepreneurs who work in the same type of sector. The reality on the ground is quite comparable for young innovative companies, whether in the health sector or other sectors.
These young enterprises and entrepreneurs have trouble making ends meet on a daily basis. There are a lot of lean years, a lot of financial insecurity, before they can move to the next stage. It was also mentioned a little earlier that seeking funding from numerous organizations demands a lot of paperwork.
Moreover, the Canadian brains who design these innovative products wind up losing their intellectual property. In many cases, they sell it to a larger business. In one way, that is a good thing, since that is how things are done in the free market. However, they do so mostly out of disappointment. They want to finally make some money, but this prevents them from bringing their projects to fruition, from going from being small players to being medium players, and then big ones. We often witness this cannibalistic effect.
Would you have any solution to propose to allow them to distance themselves from that model, something that would help these young businesses to develop naturally?