Finance committee  It is not enough to accept the concept of risk, you must also change your definition of what constitutes a good risk, what is a failure, and what is a disappointing investment of public funds. As I explained, in Israel, the fact that less than 10% of companies are publicly subsi

Finance committee  Thank you for your question, Mr. Fergus. As I understand the government's intention in appointing a chief science advisor, it is not to create a position comparable to the one in Israel. As I understand the government's intention in creating this position in Canada, it wants som

Finance committee  As we see it, the superclusters initiative addresses a deficiency in Canada in the area of industrial innovation, in the same way, for example, that the Israelis addressed the lack of regional markets as a deficiency. What's our deficiency? We are not as interconnected a societ

Finance committee  I'm not sure it will. I don't know. I haven't looked at it in great detail. I can tell you, however, that venture capital is not playing the same role it did 20 or 25 years ago in the growth of start-ups, simply because 20 or 25 years ago most of the start-ups were involved in w

Finance committee  To a large degree, that's true but not totally. You're quite right that the government receives funding repayment in the event of success, but it is not a business, and if the refunding is too high, it means that the risk wasn't high enough. It's the role of government to share i

Finance committee  As you noted, there's a different culture in terms of risk-taking. The Office of the Chief Scientist, now known as the Israel Innovation Authority, typically, in the portfolio of thousands of Israeli companies that it supports.... Its core program, just to be clear, is to provide

Finance committee  Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity to present our views to the committee as it prepares its recommendations to the Minister of Finance in the context of pre-budget consultations. We're an organization established by a bilateral treaty between Canada and Israel aimed at pr