Industry committee  Yes, and you bring up a great point, because one of the things that I think Canada has to come to grips with is that we're a small nation in the world. We have 2% of the stock market and 2% of the finances and so on. We implement a lot of standards and so on that may or may not b

Industry committee  Sure, and I appreciate the time. I guess I would come back to how innovation is the kind of fundamental that keeps industries and businesses strong and countries competitive. It's like Michael Porter said back in 1980 or 1990 or so when he reviewed Canada and said that we had to

Industry committee  That's a good question. It's a huge topic unto itself, but it's instructive to know that Canada is and is going to be one of the five or six top exporters in the world. We will continue to be that. Our strength is in every province, in B.C., Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec

Industry committee  It's a great question. Diversification is in front of our premier and in front of the cabinet right now for sure. Is it a destination, or is it a process to get to the end point? It can be both, but practically, the reality is that business people are the ones who are actually go

Industry committee  Well, I guess under the do no harm—

Industry committee  Probably...yeah, “no”.

Industry committee  If I was going to deploy the funds, we probably have enough funds in the system. Let's deploy more in the development side, the commercialization side, and deploy them more regionally through innovation centres, such as the U.S. MEP system, which has 400 centres all across the U.

Industry committee  Well, many parts of western Canada are landlocked, obviously, and it's a distance to market, and then a distance from there to a port, and then to wherever the international market is. Transportation includes international airports, which the major cities typically have; it wil

Industry committee  I would echo that one. I think you could look at investing the billion dollars across many SMEs and allow them growth management. That would be both rural and urban SMEs, not just urban-based ones.

Industry committee  Thanks for the question. It's one of those considerations that businesses always have in front of them, part of the risks and uncertainty that they're always facing. In an environment of financial situations in which currency is going up and down and the supply chain and energy

Industry committee  That's a great question. I worked with the college system quite a bit. Maybe I could talk about robotics for one second. NAIT has the Shell Manufacturing Centre, which teaches students robotics. SAIT, in Calgary, has an automation robotics centre as well. One of the problems in

Industry committee  Sure.

Industry committee  I would make a couple of points. One is that we do have ways for industry to connect and do business, but they need an understanding of what is there to do business with or who to connect with. The oil and gas sector has to have some kind of intermediary to facilitate that introd

Industry committee  Just as an example, I took the college system to Chile because I did a series of applied research projects as a consultant to them. One of the things they have is a strong agri-food industry, and oil and gas and mining resources that need to be developed. Simply connecting people

Industry committee  Okay, good. There are some other ideas I haven't addressed. I would concur with the other presenters on the spread of the R and D funds into the top end of the R and D spectrum versus further down the R and D spectrum of commercialization and development. That's one of the mess