Intellectual property is the most valuable asset the company would have. We need to have an IP regime that is not only on par with the global scale but in fact better. You can look at any small Canadian company, and I'll use myself as an example. I used to be CEO of Certicom. I had 500 intellectual properties filed globally. My last filing used to be Canada just because the regime here took much longer to get it processed and IP-protected.
Enforcing is also very critical. If you cannot enforce IP, it is absolutely useless. The courts and the practices need to be up to snuff at a global standard to make sure that our companies can in fact enforce the intellectual property they have. I would submit to you that most Canadian small companies, when they take a larger company to court on IP infringement, actually do so in the United States because often the courts move a lot faster there.
Things are changing. I think we have had this discussion before in a different panel. I think things are improving and the government is paying a lot more attention, but intellectual property is the most critical asset for our companies.