I'm not totally familiar with all the issues regarding Argentina; I do know they do have research capabilities to develop new crops. Of course, these are well-established technologies that have been developed in other centres before Argentina adopted them for its own germplasm.
The point I would like to make about examples is that I'm particularly interested, as I said in my comments, about the public-private partnerships and innovation going forward. I'm not as familiar with how that works in Argentina, but certainly in Canada this is very critical that university and government laboratories do work extensively with small companies.
We have four small companies in Saskatoon that are involved in developing oilseeds for environmentally friendly non-food uses. In my discussions and interviewing with all of these companies, their investors, their source of funding, which is then used for collaborative research in the government labs, is significantly affected by the environment, and that includes the regulatory environment. In their words, anything that destabilizes that environment changes that investment, and as Professor Phillips says, it will impact the public labs as well.
My main concern is about our innovative capability in Canada. We do not want to see that dampened through the use of non-science principles in our regulatory framework.