Finance committee  The FutureSkills lab was, on the one hand, very much focused on recognizing that we have a vibrant labour pool that's talented, diverse, and highly educated. At the same time, we are facing some very important shifts coming in the future of work and the nature of jobs, through au

Finance committee  Okay.

Finance committee  Obviously, we have to have a competitive tax environment to create that environment, but we also need a rich field of opportunities for people to come to. Typically, they would move to Canada in fields such as technology, knowing that they're not just coming for one opportunity b

Finance committee  There are models that I would say we can take pieces from and look at. Certainly, the Fraunhofer models in Germany are very well regarded models of collaboration between industry and the public sector as well as post-secondary education. As you know, they have a much stronger app

Finance committee  That's right. Part of our marketplace idea is to try to build more connections. You will also see our recommendation around future skills, whereby we really are trying to bring together not just governments but also the private sector as well as the non-profit sector and other

Finance committee  Absolutely. The SBIR program in the United States is highly competitive. It is not seen as a handout at all. It has very structured rules in terms of what stage the product is to be assessed. You progress to the next stage if you generate evidence that shows performance and effic

Finance committee  Absolutely. That is a really important consideration. Again I want to emphasize that we are talking about taking a very small percentage of the overall procurement budgets and using that small percentage to create channels for Canadian products to be tested and validated inside

Finance committee  To add to that, sometimes there's a perception that there's nothing wrong with our just keeping our population relatively static and happy and unthreatened. I think that view, however, loses the really important nuance of our dependency ratio as our current population ages. In fa

Finance committee  Sure.

Finance committee  I might offer a quick comment on the energy and environment. You will notice that among our sectors we specifically mentioned energy and renewables—both oil and gas as well as renewables—as one of the sectors that should be prioritized, for all of those reasons you mentioned. To

Finance committee  I would say there is a growing recognition, and appetite, frankly, among students to get more exposure to startup ecosystems. You see campuses across the country, universities and colleges, now offering these kinds of immersive education programs and exposure. Frankly, to go to M

Finance committee  No, absolutely not. This is not a new concept, and we're hoping that we can finally move to action on this. I think the notion is that we would begin to think about using a very small percentage of our procurement budgets, which at the federal level are around $18 billion a year—

Finance committee  Yes, there's recognition by the council—and, I think, by many of us who touch this field—that the word is so widely used now that it's in danger of losing its meaning. This would really be unfortunate given how critical it is, not only to driving productivity but also in a time o

Finance committee  Yes, I absolutely agree. That's certainly true across the innovation landscape as well, which is why we've broken our innovation recommendations into a number of pillars that need to self-reinforce each other's impact. We also recognize that there are some lessons to be learned