I would say the following. In terms of the traditional approach to industrial development, there has been an emphasis on creating the right macro framework and then creating the right tax regime to incent research and development among firms and that sort of thing. That is the policy that we have basically followed since 1995.
What has happened in the last four years is really an elaboration and a greater emphasis on direct programming so that we are investing, using programs like SIF and superclusters, to directly target specific microeconomic results that we would like in the economy.
This is something that is being done by all governments. What I would say, to give you a sense of where Canada stands on this, is that Canada had always been, in the OECD countries, an outlier in terms of the balance between tax and direct programming. That is to say we used, almost exclusively, tax measures like SR and ED to promote research and development.
What's happened over the last four years with the innovation and skills plan is that the balance has moved much more in line with more direct programming. I think an increase of about 40% has been around direct programming.
This is something that is not unique to Canada. In fact, many countries have been re-examining what the right balance is between tax and direct programming.