Thank you very much for your question and your leadership in this area. I know Markham is really a hub of innovation. There are a lot of great companies there, and many of them are participating in this particular initiative, as you mentioned, in the supercluster initiative, the advanced manufacturing one, more specifically.
Now, just to take a step back, we decided as a government that we wanted to unlock more money for research and development. We wanted better quality jobs. We wanted to see more economic growth. We decided that, rather than being prescriptive, we would create an open and transparent process led by businesses. The idea was that they would put forward competitive bids and proposals and ideas of how they'd work with smaller companies, large companies, academic institutions, and not-for-profits, to get us those desired outcomes.
Again, if someone asks me what a supercluster is, I'll say it's a job magnet. It's really about good-quality jobs. It's creating an ecosystem. Also as you mentioned, this was a very competitive process, and ultimately, we selected five. We avoided what we call the “peanut butter” approach. We wanted to be very strategic, we wanted to be very deliberate, and we wanted to have impact.
By selecting up to five—we determined five ultimately based on the criteria—we felt this would allow them to really compete, not only within Canada but globally as well. We have the digital supercluster out of British Columbia, one out of the Prairie provinces around protein and adding value to protein products, obviously the advanced manufacturing initiative that you talked about in Ontario, the artificial intelligence supply chain initiative, and then, of course, the oceans supercluster in the Atlantic Canada region.
This represents the fact that innovation takes place across the country, but fundamentally, the key metrics and take-aways are that this, at minimum, would generate billions of dollars of economic activity and tens of thousands of jobs over the coming years. This has been validated by third party experts. We also engaged government experts. We also had an expert panel, so we're very confident that this is an economic policy that will give us those desired outcomes.
Specifically in advanced manufacturing, it's about platforms. How can additive manufacturing—3-D printing, for example—and robotics help so many different aspects of our economy? It's not focused on aero or auto exclusively. These platforms like artificial intelligence or digital platforms, for instance, have a profound impact across the entire economy. I would say we have to be careful that this isn't a regional strategy. This is really about platforms that are going to be deployed and benefit the entire Canadian economy from coast to coast to coast.