Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity tonight to speak to science and technology. There are two things on which I would like to focus in the brief time I have, and that is on S and T funding.
When we think about S and T funding, we need to think about the size of the pie and how the pie is sliced. Let us start with the size of the pie.
The Minister of State for Science and Technology is very fond of stating that under his leadership, the government has increased science and technology funding by $9 billion since 2006.
However, a closer look at the Cansim table, from which these figures are drawn, and we actually had the minister in committee today and he confirmed that these are the tables used, shows that in producing this number, the minister fails to account for inflation in his calculations. I am not sure if this is a mistake or deliberate, but nevertheless the error is there.
The responsible thing for the government to do is to apply the standard accounting principles of adjusting for inflation and using the consumer price index. This accounts for the fact that a dollar today is worth much less than a dollar ten years ago. This is economics 101. The Conservatives claim they have a sparkling economic record and this is a basic it should know.
When we do this, when we apply the CPI to spending over time, the new spending that the government claims turns out to be about half of what the minister has claimed it to be. It is not $9 billion, but rather $4.5 billion in real terms.
The Conservatives use some other trickery in their calculations, so I suggest, and I suggested to the minister today, that we do not use this number at all. In fact, what we do use is another basic accounting principle that shows in fact the S and T pie has shrunk under the government.
Using the same government tables, the same one the minister said today that the Conservatives relied on for their projections, when we apply these basic accounting principles, last year the government cut S and T spending by 8.6%. In fact, S and T spending by the government is now lower in real terms than when the Conservatives took power in 2006.
The audience that will pay attention to this is scientists. They are very good at math and they will understand that what the government has done since it has come to power is actually had a cut in real dollars. The Conservatives are shrinking the pie.
Let us look at how the pie is sliced. Last week I was in Washington, D.C., meeting with Democrats and Republicans about science funding in that country.
The Republicans told me the only thing the two sides really agreed on was that the government's main job in S and T was to fund basic research. Thus, the Conservative government, which is cutting basic research funding, is even more radical than the Tea Party members with whom I met. The Conservatives are shifting money from basic research to business subsidies.
We can talk about all the other things the government is doing, such as closing the Experimental Lakes Area, muzzling scientists and destroying the National Research Council in a very haphazard way. These policies really betray a lack of understanding about how scientific advancement actually takes place.
I have heard from scientists right across the country, and they speak over and over again. In fact, they were following the committee proceedings today. They are very disappointed in what is happening under the government and they want things to change.
We are the party that speaks for science in Canada. We are the party that just committed in our convention to matching our partners in S and T funding. I look forward to becoming government in 2015 when we can make that policy come true.
