Thank you for the question.
There certainly has been a move through most of the major granting agencies, including Genome Canada, which requires matching funds. It's been on a “you have to get partners” basis. I think it was a good start, but it hasn't necessarily translated into the type of innovation we're hoping for. We still don't have many of those complementary assets I was talking about.
What I am suggesting is actually something I think the government has already been contemplating. It came out of the committee looking at innovation in the fall—the Jenkins committee—moving away from the subsidies and the tax code or direct subsidies just for innovation blankly and trying to invest strategically.
I think we have to pick winners and losers. I think one of the problems is we don't. All technology is equal, and we fund whatever. When it comes to basic research, that's a really good idea. When it comes to developing a cluster, I don't think it is as good a deal.
The types of things I'm thinking about will include funding that specifically goes partially to acquiring patents. So either the research group itself creates the innovation or you buy it.
Michigan has had some success in purchasing patents in the plastics field, for example, and then anybody who locates in the state has access to it at a low cost, whereas other people don't. So the idea is to be a little bit more strategic about intellectual property management, rather than just saying come together and so on. But in doing so, I think you have to pick winners.
CRIAQ, obviously, in Quebec, would be a good example, as would the Structural Genomics Consortium. But not all consortia out there are real consortia. They're just a whole bunch of people who get together every once in a while to talk.