Finance committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on Finance today to discuss what steps the federal government can take to support Canadians and their businesses to grow the economy in the face of a changing e

Finance committee  Yes. I think I said 2.4 million jobs will likely be created and added to the Canadian economy over the next four years.

Finance committee  Our business is to really connect universities with industry, with companies, and embed students in companies so they obtain experiential learning opportunities. Our funding comes primarily from industry, the federal government and provincial governments. We work with all 10 prov

Finance committee  Right now we have around 7,000 internships.

Finance committee  The process is the following. We have a business development team around the country, in all 10 provinces, and they knock on the doors of industry and ask the companies which problems keep them up at night and what they would be able to do if they had some more expertise in their

Finance committee  No, our headquarters is still in Vancouver.

Finance committee  We have offices in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. That's an arm's-length committee of the board of directors, which is made up academics, industry people and government people. It's very important for us to have scientific integrity for the adjudication decisions. They come back

Finance committee  I would say it's research that has an economic impact. As a mathematician, I can tell you that very abstract ideas from number theory are used every day when you use your ATM. That spectrum goes in that direction.

Finance committee  To your first comment, actually B.C. does extremely well. It does well beyond its per capita, because we started in B.C. We also have a good presence in Alberta. We could do more. Manitoba has increased its funding. We depend on the federal-provincial partnership in our model, so

Finance committee  I think there's good uptake, but there are always financial constraints. We're always trying to get the maximum number impact over delivering beyond our contract. We also understand that some of the provinces have gone through hard times, and we work with them to find leveraging

Finance committee  Of course nothing can happen without fundamental research. It's a knowledge-based economy. Knowledge is created through fundamental research. Then this research has an impact, and how we make that have an impact on the economy is very important. In the end, we want to have an im

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  Is the research support fund the one for university overhead costs?

Finance committee  It is a big issue at our post-secondary institutions. I know that compared to other jurisdictions.... For example, in the United States, the overheads on the grants are much larger and they go to support facilities, which is very important to the labs. Absolutely you need to have

Finance committee  I'd like to echo what my colleague said. The point here for us is we have thousands of students entering universities and colleges, and what kind of future are they going to have if they are not learning the skills that companies will expect? Companies are no longer really trai