Researchers and companies often work with people close to them, so it's helpful to have somebody nearby. Georgian College in Barrie is certainly a source of research capability. One of the visions for the superclusters is to network capabilities into the supercluster. At NSERC, we already network research from across the country to companies across the country. That said, I recognize the challenges you've outlined. Having a technology access centre in Barrie would be something, assuming that it was successful, that would probably be very important.
On June 20th, 2017. See this statement in context.