My point is this, Mr. Chair. There are two ways in which Canadians invest in research and in the value that's inherent in intellectual property.
One way is that we educate our children. We educate Canadians. These are the human resources that drive our economy, and we have taken great pride in the fact that our country is well educated and that we invest reasonably heavily in our education system. We could probably do more, but I think it's fair to say that Canada is among the most educated countries in the world, and it should be reflected in what our economy produces, especially when it comes to intellectual property and to intangible value.
We invest in their education, but we also directly invest as taxpayers in the research institutions that we have within our federal government. Sadly, over the years it's become apparent that a significant part of that research, with the value of that research, is lost to Canadians, because those companies are unable or unwilling to commercialize within Canada and are bought out and end up being owned by companies elsewhere in the world, primarily in the United States but Chinese companies and Japanese companies will also buy out Canadian companies, and the value of that research that Canadian taxpayers invested in effectively disappears.
It may have created temporary jobs along the way—research-driven jobs—but at the end of the day, the actual value of that research as is translated into intellectual property, the value in that IP, is gone, which is why I feel that this is a reasonable amendment to put forward to clause 16. I think we will serve Canadians very well and, by the way, incentivize taxpayers indirectly to welcome these kinds of investments, because if in fact those investments are lost because of purchases by foreign companies, we at least get the initial investment back.
We'll never get back the dollars that we invested in our children's education, especially if those children leave our country, but this is at least a step forward and is something very tangible that we can do to be accountable for the taxpayer dollars that are being invested in research. I encourage our members here to support this particular amendment.