Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses for being here.
My thoughts are on some of the comments you made, Mr. Beck, about R and D, in terms of taking it to market. I love to see a study that says that. I think it's a tremendous opportunity, as Canadians, getting the technology to market and commercializing it. I think we miss out on that.
We could spend all day just talking about this issue. Talk to us a bit about some of the challenges we have, as Canadians, in the ability to commercialize. Once again, I understand the high levels of R and D. It seems to me that foreign companies, maybe through partnerships, are taking better advantage of what our research produces than we are in Canadian companies. So my question revolves around whether it is a question of capital, meaning we just don't have enough venture capital available. Certainly we have private equity firms. Is the cost of capital, once again, too great to get the ideas to market? Is it an awareness issue?
It's great to see that we're partnering with other companies in joint ventures, other countries. And as I said, again, I think this would be a great topic for this committee to study as a whole—and I'll make a recommendation that we do—because there's so much potential there that we're missing out on. And once again, in the three and a half minutes, how do you cover all these things off?
What are some of the things we can do as Canadian companies to be more aware? Is it capital? What are those things that you see as drivers in order to help us commercialize all the great R and D work we do in this country?