Health committee  That is an excellent question. Actually, the Government of Canada has always had research centres. The National Research Council has always been an incredible ambassador for Canadian research. However, over the years, we have seen the potentially useful proliferation of national research councils.

Health committee  The gold standard for a scientist is to publish his research. We do a lot of research and we publish a lot, and we read what the other scientists are publishing. We know who's in the field and we go to meetings as well, so we hear what's going on and we participate in lots of international collaboration in Europe, Japan, and China nowadays.

Health committee  Come on, nobody has to apologize for science here.

Health committee  That's totally untrue. Nanotechnology had the greatest impact on genomic research, because that's how nanotechnology has been able to provide nanochips and that's how you can now sequence all the genes for a thousand dollars. It used to be a billion dollars for a gene. Nanotechnology has already impacted genomics research, so intrinsically, fields work together.

Health committee  The reason I went into academia was that I didn't want to have an industry. I didn't want to work in industry. I wanted to be free to do whatever research I wanted. I found out that this was not actually possible, but I was young and restless. But I really admire scientists who create their own start-up companies.

Health committee  Researchers always need more money. As Dr. Chan said, the development stage is more and more expensive. The only way to be able to continue with development is to make sure that companies with capital invest in basic research and continue to support industrial research. Research is what will allow nanotechnology and nanomedicine to generate real practical applications that will serve Canadians.

Health committee  Thank you. Since you asked me the question in French, I am going to answer in French. In all the countries around the world where research is conducted, we are seeing a strong tendency to reduce public funding for basic research in order to support targeted research. There is really no harm in doing targeted research; it is even desirable when it comes to development.

Health committee  Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to comment on that. I think one of the dangers right now is that we're lagging behind many countries in many parts of the world. Europe and the U.S., and even Singapore and Asia, are really cracking down on nanotechnology, especially for medicine.

Health committee  I also think there are opportunities in Canada, even though the industrial sector is not developed as well. You probably know that the pharmaceutical sector and biopharmaceutical sector is completely changing in Canada, with all these big pharmas moving out of fundamental research.

Health committee  —of programs—

Health committee  I think Canada has been pretty successful in the genomic area by building capacities, by linking people together, and I think our colleagues can comment on that. With Genome Canada, what we need is some sort of a “Genome Canada-Nanomedicine Canada” that will bring together scientists.

Health committee  We need engineers, chemists, biologists, and medical doctors to work together. We need a network of scientists to work together. We can create that with a national facility—

Health committee  Yes, I'll be quite short. I want to say that I think we need—this was alluded to before—a national strategy for research in nanomedicine that incorporates companies as well. We need a research and development strategy that incorporates fundamentalists as well as engineers and companies.

Health committee  I would first like to thank...

Health committee  That is fine, thank you. I would first like to thank the members of the committee for inviting me to present part of my research work that, as you can see, is geared to the construction of bio-inspired nanostructures designed to kill bacterial or cancer cells. I am a chemist and I thank ...Dr.