Can I just jump in, if I may?
I have two comments. First, I have just one comment on a data point. We have great difficulty exporting solar panels out of Ontario. We buy solar panels in Ontario from Ontario manufacturers for the North American marketplace, but for the international marketplace the cost is 35% to 45% cheaper for solar sourced out of China for just as good quality, so we still have some struggles here.
I think your question is a very good one, Mark. There is no doubt that there are some technologies that are not going to be successful, but that's part of the statistics. There are some mortgages that are not going to get paid, which doesn't mean that we don't fund mortgages in this country, or provide guarantees from the government for mortgages. We just create a formula that helps us to be successful with it.
I think the important thing to realize is that the government is already funding the most risky stage of new technologies. Your funds into R and D through SR and ED, through IRAP, through a lot of the universities.... I was smiling when you said there was a university professor, and that they're all going after research grants. It has had an impact on our ability to be competitive. It is generally known that in early-stage technology, we are now a competitive marketplace. Toronto, as an example, and the southern Ontario area compete with Silicon Valley and rank in the top five globally on that.
But if you don't follow on with what Gordon talked about, the commercialization stage funding, then you get the great metric on the first phase, but you don't get it on the second. There's no question, how do you do it right? Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished. You establish a program like what the Ontario government has done. I'm sure there are parts that were right; I'm sure there are parts that were wrong, but at least they did something. Doing nothing is the kiss of death.
What I would say is that given where we are today, there has been and continues to be significant investment. There's no question that jobs are moving towards innovation, and we have to help that out. I think that what a lot of us are talking about, even the gentleman from Canadian Solar, Michael, is that everything we're pointing to concerns those commercialization and later-stage pieces, where the risk pieces have already been funded. If you don't fund that last piece, then you're losing the value of what you've got. I think we would suggest that if you can figure out some good policy strategies, you're going to get a triple whammy—not only unleashing the value of what is there today, but also unleashing the value of what's been spent over the last eight to 12 years that's just sitting there to be converted into jobs and other things because it's at that commercialization stage. It's less risky money now for some of those things at a later stage. But you're right that you have to figure it out, you've constantly got to adjust, and you've constantly got to change and be on top of it on a go-forward basis. There's no getting around that.