Finance committee  There are a lot of places we can start. We talked about tax credits and procurement. To my mind, these are supply-and-demand sides of the same equation about how we make sure we're getting more innovation in the economy. On the supply side—and traditionally we've been better at this in Canada—there has been a lot of emphasis on tax credits and research funding.

Finance committee  I think that's a really good summary. In the interest of keeping this concise, I'll note that we, in a very timely way, published our response to the patent box side of the consultation. We think an innovation box measure, which is a little more broadly constructed and includes more types of IP, is a really good way to complement our research input tax credit with something that explicitly looks at commercializing and provides more support and incentive to export, which is the critical thing to do for these scaling firms that need to operate in global markets.

Finance committee  We recently put out a report with six recommendations. I'll tackle the one that I think really hits at the core problem we identified, which is fundamentally one of culture and the institutional incentives and processes that are in place. The main takeaway we heard from talking to lots of innovators is that the way government does procurement sets the risk that we do things as they currently exist—at zero.

Human Resources committee  Thank you for your question. I'll answer in English. What Mr. Roberts said, I think, is really applicable here. This is going to be a process that is going to be gradual and over time. I think there's going to be, as we've already seen, flare-ups around the use of AI in the workplace in various ways.

Human Resources committee  The short answer is absolutely yes. Certainly, if we're not doing it, others will. I would point back to the renegotiation of NAFTA, which resulted in CUSMA. I think we will look back on the digital trade chapter as something that has unfortunately not been super good for Canadian innovators.

Human Resources committee  That's a very good question, and I can't speak to exact numbers here. Something I've heard from companies is that they're looking at computing capacity, access to computing, and this is starting to become quite expensive for a variety of reasons. I think this is something we should look at closely and maybe get a bit more of a feel across the industry for what those numbers look like.

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  I think that's true, and I think that's fair. I will say off the top that vinyl has made a huge comeback. People love vinyl again.

Human Resources committee  I think that's right. I think what Mr. Roberts has said about the social licence piece of this is really important. I mentioned in my opening statement that we had electrification and industrialization, and those didn't always work out great for a lot of people. In many ways, Luddites had a point; they had a very good point.

Human Resources committee  It's very hard to put an exact timeline on this, but I would say that we will probably.... Mr. Aitchison mentioned earlier these gaps in workforce and how you'll have people age out before new people are ready to come in. I think that we might be looking at a mismatch if we don't get serious about this in the next couple of years, because we're starting to see the foot go on the gas of AI adoption worldwide.

Human Resources committee  To some extent, I might not be the best placed to speak to the specifics of this. Ultimately, if the issue is municipalities having throughput issues and they are able to get an AI product or service from a provider that enables them to do this kind of work much more quickly, I think we should have frameworks that enable that.

Human Resources committee  I'll zoom out a touch, while keeping it short. I would say there is a broad opportunity for the public sector in general to use AI in a lot more of its operations. For that to be the case, I think the way we approach procurement will probably have to change a bit to allow for a more back-and-forth dialogue between innovators and folks who want to buy innovation in the public sector.

Human Resources committee  Absolutely, yes: I think that's the short answer. As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to scaling AI companies, Canada's not a huge global market. If companies are able to compete globally from day one because our regulatory system is aligned with those of the EU and the U.S., that is a very big advantage.

Human Resources committee  I mentioned this in my opening statement. From 2018 Q2 to now, there have been little wobbles, but we're actually a little below where we were in 2018 Q2. That's pretty worrying, isn't it? You expect to see a low but reasonably consistent level of productivity growth. Obviously, these last five years have been odd in lots of different ways, but other countries have not had that experience.

Human Resources committee  I can speak to the U.S. part. We are well behind the U.S. There's a pretty big gap between output per hour. On the others, I honestly would have to get back to you. I have a couple of comparisons in my statement there, saying that we're right around where Italy, Turkey and Spain are, but I don't remember the exact top 10 or however many.