Thank you for the invitation to meet with you today.
I am honoured to have this opportunity to talk to you about the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and its role in the implementation of the Science and Technology Strategy.
I have submitted a prepared brief, but I would like to keep my remarks shorter than that to maximize the time for questions.
I have just three messages that I would like to give you. First, we are completely aligned with the government's S and T strategy. Second, we are delighted to be viewed as central to the government's role of solving Canada's economic and societal problems. And third, we're working very closely with our colleagues at CIHR, SSHRC and CFI, and indeed ACCC to optimize the government's investment in S and T.
Let me elaborate very briefly on each of these three messages.
NSERC's vision is to make Canada a nation of discoverers and innovators for the benefit of all Canadians. We do that by investing in people, discovery, and innovation, with the aim of advancing prosperity and quality of life in Canada. These three thrusts of people, discovery, and innovation align perfectly with the S and T strategy's three thrusts of people advantage, knowledge advantage, and entrepreneurial advantage. In addition, the strategic areas that we support align well with the strategy's priority areas of natural resources and energy, environmental science and technologies, information and communication technologies, and health and related sciences and technologies. We have adjusted our areas to be fully aligned with the strategy. The strategy talks about promoting world-class excellence, focusing on priorities, encouraging partnerships, and enhancing accountability. We are completely committed to these four principles. For example, we have just completed an international review of our largest program to ensure that it meets international standards of excellence, and we have changed our governance structure to enhance accountability.
Now for the second message. We are happy to help solve Canada's economic and societal problems. In the most recent budget, the government has asked us to help solve immediate problems in the automotive sector, manufacturing, forestry, and fisheries. We are busy designing initiatives to accomplish this goal. Another significant problem in Canada is the limited amount of R and D performed by Canadian industry. We are attacking this problem by increasing the number of partnerships between university researchers and industry and by doubling the number of young scientists and engineers that get trained in an industrial environment. Our approach to solving Canada's problems is to attract the best people, give them the resources and the tools to do their research, and encourage them to put their discoveries to good use for the benefit of Canada.
The third message. With respect to tri-council collaboration, this is happening at many levels. We are working to coordinate our programs, perhaps most importantly so that we can better encourage and respond to research proposals that cross council boundaries. We have a large number of working groups working on many different aspects of this. Indeed, we have already opened up our programs, as have our fellow councils, to applicants from outside our traditional mandates. We are also working to coordinate our processes, such as having a common CV for a community so researchers don't have to keep different versions of their CV for different agencies. We're also working towards a single point of contact for students applying for scholarships who may not be sure which council their area relates best to. We are also working collectively to improve our ability to measure and report on the impact of the investments we have made. All of this is being done with an enthusiastic spirit of cooperation from the presidents on down through the organization.
I think I'll stop there, Mr. Chairman. We are very pleased to be part of a very exciting time for S and T in Canada.