To answer that question, I would remind you that someone appeared before your committee on this study. I believe he said that there was a study showing that 60% of businesses that had received venture capital in Canada were bought out by foreign companies and went elsewhere.
These are things that can perhaps be commercialized here but that do not necessarily stay in Canada. That is the risk you take with small businesses. They have to be assisted in commercializing their products. They have to be assisted in growing, but they also have to be assisted in staying in Canada, I hope, and eventually expanding. When they grow, that is where they will have an impact on research, development and employment.
On this point, Mr. Gupta talked about the pattern box model, which is a model used in the Netherlands and Great Britain. That could be a tax incentive for commercialization in Canada. I also suggest you look at the $400 million that will be invested in venture capital. Other countries such as Israel use these funds as matching funds. Will we increase the likelihood that a small business will remain in Canada if it receives $20 million in venture capital funding and another $20 million from a multinational company established in Canada that will assist it in commercializing these items? There may also be another option, the matching fund criterion in venture capital. That seems to work in other countries. We talked about Israel. That country put its first fund in place in 1993. Today, businesses in that country spend more on research and development as a percentage of GDP than in any other country in the world. I am not saying that this is the only thing to do. We discussed other tax measures in our report, but this is definitely one to look at once this fund is put in place.