That's a great question.
Interestingly, the U.S. is replicating DARPA in key sectors. The industries I mentioned now have an ARPA-E for energy, which deals with clean tech, and an ARPA-H, which deals with biomanufacturing—biotechnology, essentially. These institutions are independent and very nimble. They are led by scientists. The genius of it is they bring industry and researchers together to solve real industrial problems, which they translate into American companies, afterwards.
Think about where Boeing and Lockheed Martin were 50 years ago, before DARPA existed, and where they are today. It's because they were able to absorb the technology they worked on with the government. What DARPA did essentially was de-risk private investments in very expensive breakthrough technologies. Breakthrough technology is a risky business. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it doesn't. The genius of DARPA is that it tries not to do incremental innovation. It only does breakthrough innovation. In other words, if it's not crazy enough, they won't do it. That's why it works.
In Canada, we have never done that, culturally. I think this is where the world is going. I don't see any reason why, if we're so good at inventions, supposedly, we couldn't compete and create that model. Could it be a bit different and more adaptive to Canadian institutions? Sure. However, the idea, to me, is very straightforward.