Thank you.
Mr. Konecsni, like Mr. Eyking, I noted your comparison of the importance of feeding people and investing in nutrition research and the huge investment that was recently made for the Vancouver Olympic Games. In your comparison, you said that we should also consider the fact that we have huge priorities and huge concerns when it comes to the importance of feeding people.
Let me also add that 1 billion people around the world are still suffering from hunger. Given the growth of the population, unfortunately, we will not be able to solve this problem in the short term. So totally agree with you on the importance of feeding people.
You work for the National Research Council as a plant researcher. During our tour, we visited several university institutions that do the same work as you do. To our great astonishment, we learned that there had been a change in the priorities at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, or NSERC. We were told that they wanted to remove agriculture and food from the list of priorities. We are spending $1.1 billion on research and we want to give priority to the environment, to natural resources, to information technology and to the manufacturing sector, but agriculture and food will be less prominent. Your employer is still the Government of Canada, but this decision will certainly impact your organization.