Thank you.
I'm getting the last of the interpretation here, but I believe I understand your question. In fact, I believe this is a very good example of a private-public partnership. The science and technology strategy that the Prime Minister introduced in 2007 had a number of initiatives to it, three of which I spoke to earlier.
One, of course, is to support basic discovery-type research, which is known, as many will know, as blue-sky research. We're not really sure what you're going to find, but we need to invest in basic research so that we have those discoveries to build and to enjoy into the future.
The Perimeter Institute was supported by the previous government. We looked at it when we took government. We felt it was a very good initiative with incredible possibilities and probabilities. As a result of that, in our budget we supported the Perimeter Institute with $50 million over five years. That was in 2007. Indeed, that was also matched by the Province of Ontario.
I'm assuming, though I can't speak for Mr. Lazaridis.... Mr. Lazaridis and his colleagues put $120 million of their own personal money in to get this Perimeter Institute going. As far as I'm concerned, it is an example of a private-public partnership that has significant benefits to society, not just at the discovery end, but in the ability to attract top minds from around the world who will come to Canada, work here, discover things here, allow us to make them here, and create jobs. As well, those top minds will train our current students, who then will be the teachers and the leaders of tomorrow.
The outreach Perimeter does to help teachers do a better job of teaching physics and sciences is always a good idea. Encouraging young people to take science and technology courses is extremely important, particularly since Canada graduates fewer PhDs per year than we actually need. Going forward, these are problems we have to find solutions for.
So the Government of Canada's investment in such things as the Perimeter Institute is one way for us to not only create jobs and economic benefits today, but also build for the future economy and make sure that folks are trained to meet the needs of that future economy.