Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Jesse Vincent-Herscovici, the Chief Executive Officer of Axelys, a non-profit organization established by the Government of Quebec whose mandate is to support the entire province by optimizing the transfer of public research findings for stakeholders, particularly through intellectual property.
I would therefore like to thank you for your interest in this extremely important subject. We are, of course, keen on this initiative, and very pleased to be able to support it.
I'm going to switch to English, since it's the language most of you speak. I will naturally be happy to answer questions in either language.
Quebec was not satisfied with the economic impact nor, therefore, the societal benefit derived from the majority of investments made in publicly funded research. This mirrors the Canadian paradox of having heavy investments in government and public R and D, yet relatively low declarations of inventions, patents and transfers compared to countries like the United States, which have mechanisms that require technologies stemming from federally funded research in universities to be declared to government.
Canada does not have such requirements, yet companies that can obtain capital, scale, export and compete globally, as was well put by my counterpart Mr. Balsillie, are clearly the ones that have been able to create intangible assets, especially and specifically via IP portfolios.
A large portion of the IP that was developed in Canada ended up being owned by international companies, notably in fields like AI, which are of crucial importance to our survival [Technical difficulty—Editor]