I maintain what I said earlier, which is that the government does not have the expertise to pick winners. Neither do I, and neither does anyone here, because you would need to be able to predict the future.
There are many examples of governments making bad choices with an industrial policy. On the Minitel in France, for example, which was supposed to be better than the Internet, well, it's not, and it's not there anymore. What I think the government should do is create, through legislation, clear incentives for companies to do research and development, unless there are really particular problems in the financial industry that prevent companies that have good ideas from getting financing for these ideas. In that case, maybe direct help could be warranted, but I don't think it's the case. In fact, I think we have a lot of risk capital. That's not a problem, in fact. I think it's simply a bad idea for the government to decide which technologies we will be or should be using.
This being said, it does not mean that the government should not do anything. It should, I believe, simply create, through legislation, incentives for companies to do the research. They're already doing research through COSIA, for example. In fact, companies are sharing the results of the research they're doing. If I'm not mistaken, companies are even abandoning their patents, in fact, and the royalties they could get from their research, because they simply want to share. They know they're in the same boat.
The government certainly has a role, but I personally believe that in most cases the government creates risks for companies. In fact, it's not de-risking but increasing the risks. I gave a few examples, such as overly long environmental assessments of projects without any certainty. Eventually, if it's a political decision, a company can spend hundreds of millions of dollars in a project and have all the permits.... There's one example in Quebec, not a federal government one. A mining company in northern Quebec wanted to open a uranium mine not that long ago. They got the 22 needed permits to do it, but the government intervened finally and decided, “Well, let's put a moratorium on that.” In fact, they're in court right now.
That's a major risk. In fact, I personally believe that we will not be seeing any other investments of these types in Quebec for a while. I think the government can do many things, but the first thing a government should do is make sure that it's not preventing the implementation of better ways of doing things.