House of Commons Finance Committee demain

The annual federal budget cycle has begun again, and Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Assoc. has been asked to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance tomorrow. Richard Remillard and I will be your reps, and I can promise that we will do our best to follow up on our meeting with the Prime Minister earlier this year (see prior post “Venture Capital gets on PM’s agenda” May 25-10).

One can only hope that our Parliamentarians are apprised of the challenges in the space. It wasn’t that long ago that a few of us met with the Conservative Finance Caucus to talk about the startup ecosystem, and the Liberal Party has been very keen on the innovation agenda for some time, courtesy of the efforts of Marc Garneau and Scott Brison.

Will report on how it goes, and what it all might mean for the upcoming budget. As you may recall, the CVCA has achieved little of our concrete federal GR agenda over the past 3 years (see prior post “CVCA letters to Messers Flaherty, Clement and Ignatief” Dec 26-08) than having Section 116 dealt with (in two different budgets).

Yet hope springs eternal.

MRM
(this post, like all blogs, reflects a personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of the CVCA)