We looked at patent data and saw that 75% of patents that are owned are foreign-owned and live here. I think it starts literally at that stage.
You talked about having a lot of research that happens here. We lose almost 25% of our STEM graduates. They move south immediately after graduation. Beyond the start-up stage, scale-up and most capital flow from outside of Canada.
We have a Telus Global Ventures arm. I was at a conference a month and a half ago, and we had a conversation about a number of Canadian start-ups who said their first client was a U.S. client. They couldn't even find Canadian clients. In a lot of cases, even to operate across a variety of different sectors, you're asked to give a reference from a U.S. client to show that you have scale.
There are a number of systemic barriers that hinder innovation at scale, and it plays out from there. A lot of start-ups end up moving south or being bought up through components.
We also know a lot of funding, especially in the STEM ecosystem, comes from places like DARPA, which then allows some of these businesses to grow and scale.
For me, that's the ecosystem we're dealing with. It plays its way into our productivity data and into a number of different components. Capital typically follows a risk profile, and I would say that risk certainty comes from policy certainty. Therefore, the ask I have of the committee would be to have policy certainty that will allow capital to flow and our businesses to flourish in Canada.