Status of Women committee  I think we've been having a conversation around that today in terms of it really being about getting young women interested in science before they make their final choices to stop taking math, or physics, or chemistry, at the end of high school. It's really about getting young women earlier in their careers, before they enter post-secondary education.

Status of Women committee  Of course, we don't do building and infrastructure, but I can say that from an NSERC perspective we have certainly, as I mentioned, got an equity statement now. We post all of our results in terms of gender to ensure there's no bias. We've put in place provisions for parental leave as well as extensions for our grants.

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure I fully get what you're asking here.

Status of Women committee  The science and technology week....

Status of Women committee  I think Madam Savoie gave a very good overview. There are a lot of organizations doing a lot of really exciting things, but I think the most important thing is the hands-on direct contact. As I say, we have a lot of organizations out there doing that, but it's really seeing, touching, and doing science and engineering that's going to get kids....

Status of Women committee  You see a small number. Again, this is an area where we have some work to do to open those doors.

Status of Women committee  Mitacs is a separately incorporated body from NSERC and would have its own statistics on male and female representation. I can tell you, though, that in our programs, roughly 41% of our undergraduates financed are women, and about 39% at the master's and Ph.D. level.

Status of Women committee  That program was in place, as I noted, when universities were hiring at a lower pace than they are right now. I think there are a lot of pluses and minuses with programs like that. There were certainly some careers launched as a result of it, but I would say there were also some issues around whether or not these particular positions were received within the universities at an equal stature to a regular assistant professor hiring.

Status of Women committee  Within our fields of science and engineering, our success rates for women and men are about the same. You need to disaggregate a little bit the data on the research funding of women versus men, because we have more women who are at the assistant and associate professor level, closer to the entry level, and fewer at the full professor level.

Status of Women committee  This is a mammoth program, at l think €79 billion. The EU has come together to decide, under one umbrella, research priorities. They've taken a pretty bold step, as Serge has said, to require looking at balancing in teams of researchers that come forward and students who are being trained under the umbrellas of these initiatives, and also to consider the research itself from a perspective that sometimes we tend to focus more on the male-oriented or gender-neutral research as opposed to looking at the differences between research that might be in the women's world versus the men's world.

Status of Women committee  That is a very good question. Actually most of the developed world is in a similar situation to us in that we don't see enough women coming in, particularly, as I said, to the physical sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer sciences, etc. I think to some extent a lot of us are struggling.

Status of Women committee  I would say start right at the beginning sparking kids' interest in science, such as seeing what experiments can do for you and generating excitement around research, science, and engineering. That has to be the starting point. We do support a program called PromoScience that reaches out to a huge base of people.

Status of Women committee  Madam Chair, honourable members of the committee, thank you very much for this opportunity to speak with you today. I'm joined by my colleague, Serge Villemure, who is in charge of NSERC's scholarships and fellowships program. I think my colleagues here have set the context very well.

Industry committee  Are you talking about cuts to the administrative budget?

Industry committee  The administrative budget accounts for about 4.7% of our total budget. NSERC works in a very narrow field. Every budget cut is difficult for us, but at the same time it gives us the opportunity to be creative and innovative in changing our processes and modernizing our systems.