Industry committee  Thank you. Precarn jointly submitted to the international science and technology program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to run the program that they refer to as the ISTP program. We jointly formed another not-for-profit company called ISTP Canada,

Industry committee  I apologize, but there was no translation of that question.

Industry committee  Thank you. I think I would start with a general statement that just says again that it relates to a balance in the system, but it also relates to the gap. I'll use very specific anecdotal evidence. Back in 1990 we were funding a program in universities called IRIS. There's a g

Industry committee  There are two parts to the answer. One is in direct relation to the comment by Monsieur Simoneau. That is, the cliff in public funding, especially for smaller companies that are trying to get to a prototype stage or are trying to get to the technology demonstration stage, is exac

Industry committee  It's interesting that you ask that--and I didn't even plant this. Between Tuesday and today, I discovered that in the United Kingdom--and staff probably already knows this--the Technology Strategy Board has just released a paper on innovation in the U.K., and it's a billion-pound

Industry committee  If I could, I'll start. Of course the issue is huge for Canada, and a lot of it is structural. Mr. Corr has talked a couple of times about how it's the culture in Waterloo, the culture of the University of Waterloo, and the innovation sense there that are important. You can't j

Industry committee  I simply wanted to emphasize the body-contact nature of the sport, as well. Again, to go back to our model, which I referred to earlier, in which we have an end-user at the table in a research project, we also insist that there be a university at the table. Therefore, the actual

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the invitation. The paper we submitted was subtitled “Commercialization of the Results for the Benefit of Canada”. In other words, rather than taking on science and technology broadly written, we wanted to talk about the

Finance committee  Again, we're back to the valley of death concept. The difficulty is that you need the fourth pillar organization in the middle to help the company take the technology across the valley before the venture capitalists, before the banks, before even angel investors, who then see the

Finance committee  My answer to that would be no. I think the call for yet another bureaucracy to commercialize something doesn't work. We think the way to commercialize new technologies that are emerging either out of government labs or universities is to ensure it's done in a competitive market

Finance committee  In that particular recommendation, we were discussing the role of government laboratories. They are not universities or industries, but they have specific roles to play in the national interest. The government needs to make sure that the roles defined for its labs across the coun

Finance committee  The answer we promote is that there needs to be a broad-based approach. As I mentioned, the SR and ED tax system to promote research and development in industry is among the best in the world. There could be arguments in terms of its evaluation of its effectiveness, in terms of l

Finance committee  Thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee. I am Paul Johnston, as was mentioned, the president of Precarn. It's a private, not-for-profit company that has helped companies for more than 18 years to do research and development to create, develop, and use advanc