Health committee  Thank you for the question. I think the government people are there to govern, and the scientists are there to actually do the science. The scientists definitely have the ability to target their research to what they think is the most important thing. We would once again prefer not to have the government come in and ask us to do any sort of targeted research as they have in the past.

Health committee  Should the government take the place of industry more? I'm sorry but I'm not really qualified to answer something like that.

Health committee  Absolutely. COVID is not a thing of the past. It is still here, and it's going to be here with us for many years. However, we do not know what the next thing is going to be, what the next crisis is going to be. It might be a virus. It might not be a virus. We have no idea where it's going to come from.

Health committee  Thank you. I absolutely agree with you. This is why we believe that funding fundamental science—and by fundamental science I just need to kind of explain that it is non-targeted. You don't say, here's $2 billion towards COVID or whatever, because we don't know where the next big important crisis is going to be coming up.

Health committee  Once again, absolutely, I totally agree that we're reaping the fruits of what we sowed a long time ago with respect to mRNA vaccines. That was started, again, back.... A Canadian researcher at Harvard contributed to this as well. Right now we are unfortunately not funding at the proper level that we would need.

Health committee  Canada is a really attractive location for scientists. Whenever I go to a conference, people are always quite impressed by Canada as a country. We have so much to offer as far as our society goes. However, when we are sending out applications or when we are actually trying to find people to come to our university, we're finding that people are balking at the investments we are making.

Health committee  Good morning, and thank you so much for providing me with this opportunity to speak to you on behalf of biomedical researchers in Canada. My name is Shernaz Bamji and I'm a neuroscientist and a professor at the University of British Columbia. I'm also the president of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, but I'm here today to not only speak on behalf of my members, who are over 1,000 scientists doing brain research in Canada, but for all Canadian scientists doing biomedical research.