Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to present to the committee. I've been following the testimony, and throughout my statement, I will refer back to remarks made in previous testimony.
My perspective on this issue of intellectual property and technology transfer comes from a combination of areas that I have been involved with in my career. I practised IP law for 17 years, working with small high-tech firms. I have a Ph.D. in IP law, and I spent many hours trying to access IP out of university.
In my current position, my research relates to entrepreneurship strategy, regional innovation, and the role of post-secondary institutions in economic development. I hope I bring you a perspective that you haven't heard to this point.
The solution to the question that you're raising is very complicated, and I don't think there are any magic bullets. However, I do believe there is a fundamental barrier to a more successful technology and knowledge transfer. I believe this originates from the university itself, not from the researchers or the TTOs. It originates from the administration and leadership of the universities, and I will explain that.
We know that universities are complex and cumbersome institutions. They have competing demands from many different stakeholders. They face a lot of pressure, more so today with reduced operating funds, budget limitations, pressure to grow enrolment in a global context, and increased pressure to show value to taxpayers. This is relatively new territory in the world of university leaders.
Traditionally, universities have two missions: teaching and research. Many countries outside of Canada have progressed to what the academics call the third mission: economic development. In my opinion, Canada has not advanced in the same respect as some other countries have. In fact, I would argue that we are still, in many cases, trying to reach our potential in the second mission, research. Many universities in other countries have embraced the concept of what we now call the entrepreneurial university. This has many definitions in literature, but I'll just highlight some of the main components. There is to have as part of their core activities an emphasis on research knowledge transfer, which includes technology transfer and exchange; on partnerships in regional areas; on entrepreneurial pedagogy and support infrastructures, such as incubators, maker spaces, etc.; and, importantly, on governance, strategy, and leadership in organizational design to make all these things happen.
A lack of governance, strategy, and design around this leads to some of the problems that we are experiencing in Canada. Technology transfer, for example, requires significant resource allocation, capacity, expertise, patience, leadership, intensive partnerships, risk, and perseverance. These objectives cannot be reached without direction, leadership, and incentives. While we focus on the TTO, who manages the TTO? It's the university administrators. It's the university administrators who will set the university policy, the HR policy, and the goals and directions for any TTO.
Likewise, we talk about incentivizing faculty. Well, faculty are employees of a university, and it's only the university that can negotiate collective agreements. I heard some discussion earlier about incentivizing faculty with money. That has been tried in many other jurisdictions. Faculty are generally not that incentivized by more money. They get paid rather well. They are incentivized by more of their personal goals, so we need to find ways to incentivize them. It's up to the university to find those ways. I'm not sure that it is something that is within the federal government's ability to do without being a very blunt object to get there.
When we talk about industry and how do we incentivize them to work with universities, they're incentivized only when they can get relevant access in a timely manner to valuable IP with minimal transaction costs. That's their incentive. They don't need much more, but that's very hard for them to get. Again, it's the university administration that has to find the internal processes to make this technology transfer more efficient and useful.
When we talk about universities and incentivizing faculty and incentivizing the TTOs, who's going to incentivize the Canadian university? How do we make the university as a whole more interested in being entrepreneurial? I have some suggestions, and these come from what I have been researching in the U.K., in Sweden, and in other parts of Europe where they have a big push on transforming their institutions into what they call entrepreneurial universities.
I would offer the following recommendations. The federal government could establish agreements with their provincial counterparts to provide funding for those universities willing to transition into entrepreneurial universities. The federal government could provide research funding dedicated to those universities that meet predetermined criteria on being an entrepreneurial university, and the federal government could offer training programs or certification for university leaders who wish to embrace the entrepreneurial university concept and wish to act as change agents within their institutions and within their regions. And this is currently being done all over the U.K.
Next I would like to provide some insight into Atlantic Canada. I have heard great discussion about colleges and great discussion about rural Canada, so I hope to provide some insight in that regard. Atlantic Canada is home to 20 universities and colleges. These institutions are doing great work in their regions and around the world. They are critical to the success of Atlantic Canada and small business. They may not all become leading technology transfer institutions, but they surely can all become entrepreneurial institutions given the right incentives and motivations.
Atlantic Canada is fortunate to have Springboard Atlantic. This is an initiative funded by the federal government through ACOA. It acts as a central network for commercialization and industry liaison. It has 19 members, and the funding allows it to put 30 specialized positions in its member institutions. I believe that Springboard will be submitting a brief to the committee, and I think that would provide a great understanding of what's going on in Atlantic Canada for the committee.
Springboard, as I said, funds 30 positions. These positions are 65% funded by Springboard, I believe, and 35% by the institution. Very few of these have been made permanent, so they're contractual, which leads one to suggest that perhaps if the funding dries up, so do the positions. There doesn't seem to be a willingness in the universities and the colleges to make these permanent positions. Springboard plays a key role, and we're very happy to have that initiative in Atlantic Canada.
Our institutions are faced with declining enrolment, aging populations, fewer dollars and operating funds, yet they have never been so critical to our economic and social development. With the exception of Dalhousie, our institutions are not part of the U15, so they compete for the much smaller share of the research funds that are available to them. I raise this issue because of previous discussions suggesting that metrics could be used, as you just talked about in the previous session, to link technology transfer directly to research funding. That would be disadvantageous to the institutions in Atlantic Canada and those that cannot necessarily produce that level of technology transfer. If the metrics were more broad and related more to preconditions for an entrepreneurial university, then I think that perhaps we could meet the needs across Canada.
The final point I would like to make is about the unique potential for community colleges in Atlantic Canada to play a greater role in economic development. In Newfoundland, Labrador, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, these publicly funded community colleges have a multi-campus approach. For example, in Newfoundland we have 17 campuses reaching across the province. They reach out to some very rural areas of Newfoundland and Labrador.
What I find particularly exciting in talking about colleges is that they already have a goal of economic development. Unlike universities, they can be mandated. They don't have the autonomy that universities have. The government has more power to negotiate collective agreements. The college has mechanisms for professional development that can be purposely done to affect regional development. It's not as blunt a tool as universities to reach small businesses.
From this—