Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for your opening testimony. I appreciate it very much.
Mr. Chaulk, I appreciated your comments.
I believe Solace Power's board chair's name is Neil Desai. He's made some interesting comments over the last number of months that I want to put to you, and I think they're quite in line with what you're putting forward.
In an article, he said, “The No. 1 issue I see for our country [is that] our economics don't work.” The article went on to say:
Structures in Canada around talent, capital, intellectual property and companies' freedom to operate looked very different only a decade ago, with entrepreneurs saying that a welcoming and supportive ecosystem put the wind in their sails [at that time]....
But those structures have changed during the last 10 years, he said. “The wind has actually been in the face of the entrepreneurs who are trying to do this at scale from Canada for the benefit of all Canadians.”
The article goes on:
Canada has this “weird” innovation ecosystem structural problem—not seen in other countries—where intermediaries such as financiers, universities, and business incubators and accelerators are put at the centre for validating businesses, he said. “Everywhere else the business gets to validate the business.”
With your comments on IP, obviously we need a very robust ecosystem to support the scale-ups that you've talked about. In light of some of his comments, can you give the committee a few more ideas for our policy discussion of what the Canadian government should be doing to facilitate this type of renewed ecosystem for entrepreneurs?