Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members, for extending to ITAC the opportunity to meet with you this afternoon and to participate in the study of the effectiveness of the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises and the Canadian innovation and commercialization program. At th

Government Operations committee  My comment on this draws from my personal experience of running businesses for over 30 years. For small businesses the biggest issue is the commercialization and productization. That is where CICP could play a tremendous role in being the early customer of some of the new innovat

Government Operations committee  The biggest issue here would be helping these small businesses at the commercialization phase, which really means adoption of a lot of the ICT technologies at an early stage. Most of these young companies, when they come out they struggle to get their first customer. As the appli

Government Operations committee  That's right.

Government Operations committee  There was an announcement made yesterday about some additional funding for BDC, but your point is correct. There needs to be more money going into early-stage funding of companies, through BDC or other agencies, in large part to support the whole privatization process. For most o

Government Operations committee  It truly varies by sector, so I'll give you an example. If you're in a mobilities phase--and I'll be talking to our membership--developing applications, the rapid prototyping is the quickest way to get to market. As you commercialize, you need to quickly do a prototype test wit

Government Operations committee  It's a very good question. I think small and medium businesses truly become the underlying economic engine. For most of the large companies, at the end of the day their new innovation is often through acquisition and building into the new talents as they go to the market, either

Government Operations committee  I wouldn't say it's less fair or transparent. I think it's more an issue of comfort zone. Nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM; that was the old saying, right? You always go to your comfort zone, and most buyers tend to go to the comfort zone. But as you look at the ecosystem

Government Operations committee  For the Government of Canada, you mean?

Government Operations committee  I'll give you a live example. We have a great Canadian company that is developing some 3-D technology on scanning. It's a young, small company out of the Montreal region. If they cannot sell to the Government of Canada, it will be very hard for other governments to buy that produ

Government Operations committee  I'll answer that question. I think there are several ways you can promote innovation. It starts at the university level, at the educational level. So the whole notion of bringing the universities and the private sector together, having some program that creates that entrepreneur

Government Operations committee  I think most of the recommendations are sound. The only one we're still talking to our members about concerns the SR&ED impact. When you go to a mostly labour-based model, there is a risk in the case of many of the companies that are highly capital-intensive involving how the

Government Operations committee  We reach out to our members on a regular basis through various forums as they participate in these programs. We have several staff members who look after each of these smaller accounts. As I mentioned, we have more than 300 accounts. Close to 200 involve small to medium-sized com

Government Operations committee  I would suggest it probably would make sense, because the money goes out first through BDC, and the SR&ED, by nature, comes to you after you have spent money. So you have to have some amount of cash in your pocket to spend it and then wait for the tax return. So inherently th

Government Operations committee  To your comment, the money must be used. It cannot sit in BDC. So the accountability of getting the money out the door is of primary importance.