I'd like to cover the last few minutes of our presentation with three other issues that are relevant to our industry.
On slide 13, issue number one which I highlighted is access to early funding. The problem right now is there is a new innovation fund that was put together to fund companies through VCs, but this does not respond to the needs of early stage companies that need seed funding from around $100,000 to $2 million in order to reach the next level.
We also should review and think about implementing an equity crowd-funding policy, like it already exists in the U.K. or in Australia, to democratize access to the equity funding here in Canada.
There are also some countries that do very well in the video game industry, especially Finland with their Tekes fund, that creates tremendous IPs and brands that are known across the world.
I'll briefly speak about the issue mentioned on page 16. It is important for us to develop original Canadian intellectual property, to create brands that people can recognize and that the company can build on for several years to come. It is an important source of creativity and potential growth for the industry here, and we believe there's room for a tax credit, a little bit like what's been done in some provinces to help create Canadian intellectual property.
Finally, we are also urging the government to seek new ways to better market the products. The content is something, but the marketing of the product is as important as the content itself. We believe that some initiatives could be done to help the trade commissioner service to market these products abroad. We also believe there are possibilities for the BDC and EDC to better understand this fast evolving market and be willing to take more risks.
More direct funding needs to be done in order to publish the titles that are done here. Unfortunately, in Canada we're developing great products, but we have almost no publisher to publish these titles abroad. We also think there is room for the Government of Canada to help support the local events of our industry, namely the Montreal International Game Summit, and the GameON: Finance conference in Toronto, and their supporting and presenting associations.
Thank you very much.