Finance committee  There are two questions there. I'll try to answer both very quickly. We're located in British Columbia. We are Canada's Digital Technology Supercluster. We have now received submissions from across the country, from Atlantic Canada, Montreal, Ontario, the Prairies and B.C. We have a strong reach.

Finance committee  The $153 million was declared to be invested in our supercluster. At this stage, we have paid claims of $3.6 million. The way this works is that once you go through that big process I described earlier and you come out the other end with a project that's contracted, and you reach your milestones, you can make a claim.

Finance committee  Our investment in those projects will be $24.2 million, of which $3.6 million has been deployed. The rest will be deployed as they hit milestones. The rest of the money will be deployed as we approve projects going forward.

Finance committee  Our supercluster is composed of large companies, small companies, and research and post-secondary institutions. Right now, in terms of the number of companies involved, 50% of our companies involved are SMEs. In terms of the investment in our 21 projects to date, approximately 50% of that investment is in SMEs.

Finance committee  Yes, and you don't get investment from the supercluster until you deliver results. This is not upfront investment.

Finance committee  We're selecting technologies that are produced by a combination of companies, big and small.

Finance committee  Producing a result.

Finance committee  Thank you for that question. I'm going to focus my responses on digital. I'm not informed to speak on behalf of all the others. Building an innovation ecosystem and seeing the results of these kinds of ecosystems is a medium- to long-term exercise. It doesn't happen overnight.

Finance committee  I will just add to what Dr. Mintz has said. I wholeheartedly support the notion of IRAP. If we want to build ecosystems, we have to help companies go beyond understanding how to build business plans and help them understand and learn how to compete, how to grow, how to attract customers and how to build new products.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Fraser. I appreciate the question. One thing we do in our organization that I think is different from what has been done in previous attempts to encourage economic development and innovation is that we focus first on the problems. One of the things that I mentioned we have done, and it might be useful to consider it in other contexts, is to go to different groups in society, whether those be families or communities in remote rural areas or experts in a certain area, and ask for a discussion on what they perceive to be the biggest problems.

Finance committee  Thank you, and thank you for inviting me to speak here today. My name is Sue Paish. I am the CEO of Canada's Digital Technology Supercluster. Like many Canadians, you may be asking, “Who are you? What do you do? How do you do it, and why should we care?” I'm going to answer those questions in a moment, but first I want to start to talk to you about why I'm part of this organization.