When we studied economic benefits or policies on industrial benefits, we found that benefits were often generated in areas not directly related to defence policy.
These expenditures meet the criteria for the number of dollars spent, but relatively few went to small and medium-sized enterprises. Very little is done in priority sectors like research and development, or investment in post-secondary institutions, even though the enterprises that are required to meet these criteria obtain credits of four to nine times the amounts invested. They could multiply the number of dollars spent in these sectors by four or nine times, but they do so very rarely. This suggests that the expenditures or investments that meet the industrial benefit criteria would probably have occurred in any case, or would not add anything to what would have been done without the policy.