We certainly think the idea of having some standardized templates for negotiations would be quite helpful. Some models in the U.K. and Australia would be helpful for us to look at.
As part of the Business/Higher Education Roundtable, which includes 27 of our universities, colleges, CEOs, and the Business Council of Canada, some work is being done now on some standard research collaboration templates for that very reason. As my colleague said, and as I've noted, having a one-size IP policy, given regional and sectoral differences, is not necessarily the answer to drive commercialization, but having standard templates in best practice that can be learned from, we think would be very useful.
In terms of other initiatives that we think are important to help support the collaborative efforts between our institution and the private sector that leads to tech transfer, as I noted earlier we are concerned with the fact that right now we don't have a funding mechanism that supports knowledge mobilization out of universities. We think the clusters are a good step. They will support some important initiatives, including, we think, not just geographic clusters, but those that are networked in as well, in terms of specific expertise. Some support along the lines of what the U.K. has, a higher education innovation fund, which allows supports for business, universities, and other partners to work together, is one thing we think Canada should consider.
As well, perhaps look at whether there could be a new form of what existed, which was the intellectual property mobilization program through the tri-councils, which, as colleagues have said, helped strengthen and streamline the expertise within tech transfer offices to share best practices and to have expertise within our universities that is dedicated to getting the intellectual property and the technology out of the institutions. The loss of that program really did result in a decline of the capacity within our institutions to act on tech transfer objectives with their companies. We can share the statistics with the committee if you're interested.
I think we're seeing some novel IP frameworks within open science initiatives. The Montreal Neurological Institute launched an open science initiative last year. We think this is a new area where Canada is leading, and can result in some new ways to promote commercialization, and make the knowledge coming out of these research initiatives widely available.