Thank you, Madam.
The first one is that Canadian research institutions should be encouraged to open their doors to involvement with small and medium-sized businesses. Government incentives such as tax holidays for start-up companies could be put in place and effectively implemented. It doesn't cost anything, because if they don't start up you don't have the tax. If an innovation comes out of a university or a research hospital, then give the company a bit of a break. It's not costing anything. You're just foregoing revenue for a while.
On the other side, business should be encouraged to interact with research. The new pilot program of tax credits to small and medium-sized business that came out of Tom Jenkins' report is a good incentive. It should be expanded with increased interaction, not only with universities but also with research hospitals. It is important that everyone in this room understand that research in health care is largely done in research hospitals.
Third, considerable engineering research is conducted within research hospitals and yet the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council funds must be administered by universities, and that's a bit of a nuisance. It is time to open access to NSERC funding to hospital-based researchers, in the same way CIHR operates.
Fourth, too often research proposals to NSERC are criticized for having too much health-related content. This may seem parochial to you, but it's a big irritant to researchers who bridge between engineering and medicine. These government agencies must be reminded that interdisciplinary research, crossing the boundaries of engineering and medicine, should be encouraged.
Fifth, and you've heard this before, our researchers should be rewarded for commercialization activities rather than penalized, as at present. Academic careers and grant funding are judged primarily on easily measured scales that score the number of publications and the status of the journals they appear in. How about this? Why don't we think about not just having a program of Canada research chairs, which is terrific, but about launching a program of Canada innovation chairs? So we set the tone. We set something that reminds the academic world that this is a worthy activity to aim for, that it has status.
Six, consideration should be given to increasing the budgets of the granting councils. Of course, you expect me to say that, but what about designating funds particularly for prototype-making and for intellectual property protection? This way, instead of being cut from the budgets, when you apply for the money they're in a special box. If your research is going ahead, you can apply for access to those targeted funds.
Seven, energy should be directed to reforms of government programs that encourage strategic procurement to encourage Canadian innovation. You heard this from Dr. Strangway the other day, and you heard this also from Tom Jenkins. There are opportunities, particularly in Defence and Veterans Affairs. Unfortunately, in health care, each province has its own program for approval of health devices. Maybe the Minister of Health might be encouraged to work through the FPT process to see if we can get some harmonization to improve this and get rid of some of the difficulties with interprovincial boundaries.
Eight, this one that might cost a little bit of money, but a new Canadian program akin to the small business innovation research program and the small business technology transfer program in the U.S. should be established, particularly to support small businesses and start-ups working with Canadian research and innovation centres. There are three fundamental characteristics that will make such a program successful. First is a real effort in keeping paperwork to a minimum. Researchers hate it, and it stifles innovation and loses opportunities. Second is a year-round and fast application and reviewing process that's relevant to commercial opportunities. Third, and most important, is a strong focus on strategically utilizing public procurement power to actively help small businesses find and secure early customers.
Done.