Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, honourable members. With me is Linda Oliver, as you've mentioned. What I'm going to do is walk you through ITAC's position relative to the shared services that have been set up. ITAC, as you know, speaks for the Canadian information and comm

Industry committee  Thank you. I think the internship or co-op program in universities is critical. It should almost be doled out with all of the science programs in every university and every college. It should be part of the curriculum going forward, because nowadays as the kids come.... I'll g

Industry committee  I believe that the mobile wallet is here. It is going to come to Canada, and it'll be used very heavily. Essentially there is a bunch of other things that need to happen. Your mobile phone carries your credentials now. So when you walk up to a grocery store and you don't have you

Industry committee  Several issues will need to be addressed. One is managing your credentials. I'll give you one example from an energy point of view. If you have an electric car and I come to your house and plug in my car, who pays for the car? Do you pay or do I pay? Carrying your credentials wit

Industry committee  Thank you for the question. The big part of this is that it has to start at a very early stage, down to the high school level at grade 10, because there is not enough awareness and training that kids can go into ICT as a career. So when you look at the ICT community today, it is

Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having ITAC participate and comment on your study on e-commerce in Canada. ITAC represents industries in Canada. Many of our members are large companies as well as multinationals, but the vast majority are small and medium size companies in Canada—w

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.

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 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  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  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