Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
For everyone's benefit, I will continue in English rather than put my awful French to the test: It's mostly limited to the vocabulary of a soldier.
My name is Duncan McSporran. I'm a veteran of 24 years' service in the British Army, including time seconded to the United States Army, and more recently here in Canada, where I spent two and a half years at the Canadian Army infantry school, responsible for phase two officer training and technical and leadership development of infantry non-commissioned officers. I'm a four-time founder here in Canada since transitioning from my service at the infantry school at CFB Gagetown in 2012.
Currently, I work at the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship as a general partner at Tidal Venture Partners, and I am a founder of Vimy Forge. This is a national not-for-profit innovation accelerator for small and medium technology companies in the defence sector that's based in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Although my current work is largely [Technical difficulty—Editor].