Industry committee  I'll do my best to answer the question. I don't have the exact numbers. We have put in excess of $10 million into developing the technology. It's not solely for the Alberta site. We've done smaller pilots leading to that larger site because our partners wouldn't be interested in something that's completely unproven.

Industry committee  It's difficult to come up with a number because we do a lot of contract work externally, and spend millions of dollars with contractors in Alberta, Ontario and elsewhere. If I had to estimate, we're probably in the triple digits now. We've probably created 90 to 100 jobs. Of my staff, about 60% are Ph.D.'

Industry committee  They would likely leave Canada. Our competitors, to retain.... Our human resources are mostly folks in the valley. The Apples and the Googles of the world would probably pick up our people.

Industry committee  Yes. Most of these guys and girls are educated here, and they often have a master's or Ph.D.

Industry committee  Sure. Like Peter has mentioned, we're more advanced than most international competitors out there. We have more than 10 top clean-tech companies in the world that are recognized. Also, we continue to have fantastic innovation that comes out of our own labs at universities, as well as other institutions.

Industry committee  SDTC evolved over the time that we received support. There was a seed stage fund, I believe, which provided seed stage funding. We were later on in the cycle because our technology was a little bit more progressed from a seed stage technology. SDTC has been—along with other funding agencies, like ERA and NRC IRAP—bridging that gap between innovation that comes out of a university like ours and commercial application.

Industry committee  It's a pilot that we're hoping to ultimately sell to our partner. It's on the precipice of commercialization.

Industry committee  That's correct.

Industry committee  It's a lengthy process. From start to finish, when we received our funding, it was almost a year, and a year is a lifetime in the start-up world. If there is a way to shrink that timeline, that would be wonderful. I think it was often related to a lack of resources. There are only so many files a manager can have.

Industry committee  Clean-tech funding is often hardware in nature, and that takes a lot of time. It's not like a software, which may be commercial within months. We've been working with our materials technology for over 10 years now. We have commercialized it in the medical device space, but the clean-tech space is extra difficult.

Industry committee  Good evening, Chair, and members of this committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Ibraheem Khan. I'm the CEO of Smarter Alloys, which is a company founded on a patented technology that came out of my doctoral work at the University of Waterloo. We are an SDTC-funded company located in Cambridge, Ontario.