Mr. Chairman, I'd like to thank the member for his questions.
The national report was delivered to Agriculture Canada back in late January or early February of 2009. I'm not aware of the direct impact on policies of that report; I wouldn't be aware of it anyway. I hope it's being utilized in producing new programs and so on, but I don't know for sure. They've had it in their hands for nine months.
With respect to the problematic lack of venture capital, perception is almost everything in our world. One of the issues we have among the investment community is that, first of all, they don't understand agriculture or agri-food, so it's an education issue. The second issue, with all due respect to the farmers and producers, is that a negative aspect comes out when farmers and producers are driving their vehicles around Queen's Park. The investors pick up the Globe and Mail and see that picture on the front page and wonder why they would invest in a money-losing industry. Again, they don't understand the dynamics of the industry and where the opportunities are, but that's the perception they have. We've struggled to change that perception. The third aspect is that investors invest in what they know. If you have major money in the oil patch and you've made a lot of money, you're going to reinvest in the oil patch. In the case of the high-tech or medical community, where we have seen a boom take place, we now have plenty of entrepreneurs who became investors and are now investing back into those communities. We don't have that list of successful entrepreneurs in the agricultural industry in Canada. We have to build that and attract other investors into the industry. That's what I mean when I say it's problematic.
The third point you asked about was the commercialization expansion program.
We have a variety of organizations from coast to coast that dabble in certain aspects of commercialization, and the report lists them all. Some of them, for example, will put on breakfasts and invite entrepreneurs in. They'll try to introduce entrepreneurs to other entrepreneurs in the hope that the introductions will result in some form of commercialization. It's a very hands-off approach, and 90% of the time it doesn't result in very much.
In a couple of models--and you'll see this in Israel, France, and parts of Australia--the entrepreneur needs to be shepherded from the very beginning all the way through until his product is in the marketplace, because he may have regulatory, marketing and distribution, licensing, or legal issues to deal with, and very few entrepreneurs know it all. They need this help.
Setting up a standard, a suite of commercialization services across the country, will allow somebody who is located in Truro, Nova Scotia, or Laval, Quebec, to get the same service that you would expect in downtown Vancouver, Calgary, Saskatoon, or Toronto. That is not the case today. Today you have expertise in certain areas, but no expertise and no service in other areas. That's detrimental, because a lot of the research and commercialization that need to be done are in the non-urban areas.