Mr. Chair, businesses, post-secondary institutions, governments, and other innovation stakeholders need to work together more strategically to create greater value for Canada. These connections are critical to transforming today's ideas into the products and services of tomorrow.
We will invest up to $800 million over four years to support innovation networks and clusters as part of our upcoming innovation agenda. While further work on our innovation agenda is taking place, budget 2016 provides the industrial research assistance program with a further $50 million in 2016-17 to increase the number of companies served by the program's highly qualified industrial technology advisers nationwide.
Finally, northern communities are a rich resource in the areas of geoscience, renewable energy, fisheries, tourism, and cultural sectors. To help promote strong, diverse, and sustainable economies for northerners, budget 2016 provides $40 million over two years to renew the strategic investments in northern economic development programs to the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency.
We are proud of these measures to improve academic institutions and in the north in their innovation efforts.