As an industry department, we tend to look at things from the perspective of commercial outcomes. Our view is that achieving commercial outcomes is critical to the success in policy areas like energy efficiency and the reduction of carbon emissions.
When I take a look at the challenges that I've seen facing companies coming through the door on the technology side—and I appreciate this committee may be more focused around issues related to technology adoption, and I respect that, and that is not my forte—my sense is, sir, that catalyzing those companies to grow not only to meet Canadian market demand, but global market demand, is quite critical. There's a shocking consistency in what we're seeing in the needs of those companies. Not surprisingly, they need access to capital.
In this particular area around clean technology, energy efficiency being a part of that, generally speaking, private sector investment has been more limited than we've seen in other technology sectors, like the information technology sector, largely because the timeline to return for clean technology is longer than it would be in, say, the IT sector. Access to capital is always an issue in this space.
There is no question that skills development and skills capacity is an issue in this space. Again, as an industry department, we tend to look at that issue from two perspectives. Clearly there's a need for STEM skills and capacity in engineering in that space, but increasingly, sir, we're seeing the importance of making sure that our companies have good business skills, that companies have a CFO who actually knows how to grow the company when you get to that point when you're about to hit international markets.
Market penetration is important. Having a thoughtful approach to market development in this space is extremely important. Out of all of the companies that I've seen in the course of my time in this work, I can't recall one company that was completely dependent on the Canadian market space. In fact, virtually every company that I see and deal with is export oriented. Helping those companies access markets, recognizing some of the real challenges around IP protection and access in key markets, is really important.