Thank you for that question. Intellectual property is a foundational piece and an essential piece for the knowledge economy going forward.
If you look at the U.S. and their S&P 500, you see that 84% of the assets attributed to the companies are intangible assets. It's connected to IP. If you look at the TSX top 30, you see that 40% of the asset base is attributed to IP. We're behind the U.S., and compared to other jurisdictions as well, and we really have to step up.
We want to be in the business of generating more IP and making sure that we see the benefits here in Canada. That's why we put forward the first national IP strategy, based on the work you did. It was really well received.
Jim Balsillie, for example, someone who is really knowledgeable about this, said that ISED—not me, but more specifically the department I work with—“has been a tireless champion of innovative Canadian companies". He said, “I'm delighted that [under the leadership of ISED we've] put in place this most significant pillar for an innovation strategy.... Raising sophisticated domestic capacity in IP ensures Canada will improve the commercialization of our ideas globally.” This is pretty high praise from someone who understands the importance of IP.
We received similar support from many different professors, the IP Institute of Canada and the different organizations and companies that use IP. Particularly in our smaller and medium-sized businesses, only 10% actually have an IP strategy, and only 10% actually use that IP strategy as part of their business plan. What we're trying to do, fundamentally, is to say, how do we increase that number?
I think the larger companies, generally speaking, are better when it comes to IP generation and IP development and the benefits of it, but it's really about the small and medium-sized companies. We've put forward measures in the IP strategy to also protect Canadian companies, particularly around trolls, to deal with issues around the demand letters that are issued in order to make sure that those demand letters protect them and protect their IP. We've looked at patent collectives, another area that's really important: to combine different patents to provide more opportunities for businesses and to deal with trolls as well.
These are some of the strategies we're deploying. It's $85.3 million that we're investing for significant investments in IP, so it's not simply legislative changes that you're seeing in the legislature, in the House of Commons, but financial resources as well, to move forward on the strategy.