Science and Research committee  At the regional level, the amount of money invested is too small to have an impact.

Science and Research committee  The Canadian market is small; we won't lie. It has the potential to grow more anchors and bigger companies. We always seem as Canadians to put our eggs in the basket of the shiny object. Shopify was the last one. We just need more of them. The potential is there. The number of co

Science and Research committee  My favourite example is a company called CarbonCure, which started out of Halifax and now operates out of Vancouver. The name of the company tells you what they do. They capture the carbon emissions and turn them into carbon. They sell to Amazon. They sell to Google. They sell to

Science and Research committee  If that happened, the capital would move. It would go. It's not like moving a factory. The investors and capital would set up these funds in other countries. We would see a large decrease, because you're taking a risk. Unlike a salaried employee, you don't get paid until 10 years

Science and Research committee  Seventy per cent of all VC dollars go to information technology software—the SaaS and B2B companies, which are easily scaled globally. There's a signal the government understands they need to play in niche areas, where it's more capital intensive. Last year, BDC initiated a new

Science and Research committee  Yes. Absolutely. What we need to be as a nation is more ambitious. The government, in taking risk and accepting failures, needs to be more agile and talking publicly about failures, acknowledging them before saying, we're going to do this. I remember speaking to the premier of

Science and Research committee  I think having regulators put down thresholds for accredited investors is good, because you want someone to understand what they're getting into. That being said, democratizing access to venture capital and having the tax sector invest in the value being created before it goes

Science and Research committee  The mechanisms exist right now. There are a few platforms in Canada where you can, as a retail investor, access these. They're limited.

Science and Research committee  From the moment they announced they were doing this fund, they were fully subscribed within 24 hours. This tells you there's a realization that's where wealth is being created, yet the retail investor does not have access to it. Take Fonds FTQ in Quebec, which basically does that

Science and Research committee  Everyone wants to have a Canadian Glaxo. That would be the ideal: having a Canadian multinational that would help translate and commercialize the data. In life sciences, a lot of R and D is passed through multinationals. The idea of a small biotech growing up to become a Pfizer i

Science and Research committee  The stats I gave you are for the program created by Harper's Conservative government. Those stats are available because of dollars that have been returned. The other two under the Trudeau government are still in market. One is fully allocated and one is currently being fundraised

Science and Research committee  I think the culture in the U.S. is a lot more open to risk than Canadian culture is. I do think that over the last decade the investors and the entrepreneurs in Canada and even the business schools have pushed out better and more risk-tolerant entrepreneurs. The availability of c

Science and Research committee  I think the government needs to stay the course. There have been three programs: VCAP, VCCI and renewed VCCI. The third one is in process. I think institutional capital, our biggest pension plans, operate in U.S. VC but in very little Canadian VC. Sometimes they'll do direct de

Science and Research committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair. I thank the committee members. My remarks will be in English, but I will be happy to answer your questions in French afterwards. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about venture capital, commercialization and intellectual property. It