Finance committee  That's right.

Finance committee  The IP matchmaking piece—I believe the budget was around half a million dollars a year over a three-year period—had the goal of on-boarding the institutions. The institutions all have very different policies on IP. Bringing some sort of alignment to how we would consolidate or collect and represent that data was basically the goal.

Finance committee  Unfortunately, what seems to be on the table at this time is a bit of a disincentive for savings and achieving those profit levels. From our perspective, we know that consultations are still occurring and that there are other ideas that will be on the table. At first glance, in terms of what's on the table at this time, the proposed tax rates—what would be left in organizations—would certainly be a disincentive for saving and achieving those profit levels that you could invest in research and development activities and actually reinvest back into your business to hire new people.

Finance committee  Certainly tax rates at that level would absolutely have an impact.

Finance committee  It's a negative impact. You're not going to have the money if you're going to be taxed at a 72% rate because you're leaving money in your company or you take it out and you're taxed at your 40% or 50% tax bracket. It's terrible. It's not good, and it's not aligned with the good work that's being done from an innovation agenda perspective.

Finance committee  Yes, but then what does it do to your business? You need to leave it in your business. I'm a business owner myself and business owners work hard. I know there are some criticisms of what they have or what they work for, but it's the choice they make and there are incredible risks associated with having a business as well.

Finance committee  One of the items we highlighted in our budget submission was the intellectual property matchmaking program. There are lots of great ideas coming out of the institutions. A big part of the challenge is that there's not a great level of awareness of those opportunities to match companies with some of the researchers or the students who are taking on these projects or coming up with these new innovations and these new ideas.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. It's my pleasure to be here with you today to speak on behalf of the Canadian Association of University Research Parks, also known as AURP Canada, and our 27 innovation districts across the country. I co-founded the association 10 years ago, and currently act as the managing director.

Finance committee  Certainly. Sorry about that. I was actually going a little slower than I normally go. Oh, dear. Our goal is to improve trade opportunities and build capacity for companies to accelerate their growth potential in both domestic and foreign markets. There is also a need to improve coordination of the innovation ecosystem here in Canada to better align mandates of various organizations and groups, to streamline efficiencies and standardize offerings, to better support companies, and to thus maximize outcomes for Canada.

Industry committee  Dawn can go first, and then I'd like to talk.

Industry committee  I have a couple of comments on that. Certainly, you mentioned a coordination effort, and we do believe that is part of the issue. There's also the issue of the programs that fund early-stage research and commercialization activities. They do not account for “go to market”. There are not allocations.

Industry committee  Exactly.

Industry committee  Exactly.

Industry committee  Right now, as it stands, the academic institutions and the technology transfer offices work on a localized level with the companies that are interested in using or applying that technology and that research. What we're proposing is a system that would allow different areas. It would take it from a localized approach to a national and regional approach, whereby if there is an academic researcher in Edmonton, for example, and there is an intellectual property opportunity in Fredericton, then they would see and be able to sort by discipline or area of focus to be able to help that organization get to market faster with potentially a new innovation.

Industry committee  You definitely need access to resources. The other challenge would be from an academic institution perspective. Many of the universities have different IP policies and may or may not have all of the disclosures available to them. Fundamentally, you wouldn't be able to get 100% participation, but if you put the resources behind first mapping out what IP is actually available and then building out the database, we do believe it could be quite interesting for acceleration of company scaling, as was discussed in some of the conversation.