You were up, actually, about 45 seconds ago. As probing and interesting as your questions are, Mr. Storseth, I have to move on.
It's my turn to ask questions, and if I might, with your permission, I will ask them from the chair.
We learned a couple of weeks ago that the federal panel on support for research and development had noted that Canadian business expenditures on research and development have fallen every year since 2006, both in real terms and as a percentage of GDP. The panel noted that at 1% of GDP, Canada's investment in research is much lower than it is in the OECD countries, where I think the average is about 1.6%. I'm not blaming government or anyone for that at all. It's business investment. We know that money is invested by the government through incentives or direct investment in public research and other programs. And we know that some of it is privately driven.
We're supposed to cut our budgets, actually, by 5% to 10%, right? And you've come asking for more money. I laud you for that, but it's not likely to happen. Let's be realistic. So what do we do? Do we try to provide incentives through tax policy? Do we try to drive the industry through SR&ED or something different from SR&ED? Do we offer, I don't know, things like flow-through shares that people might invest in to help commercialize? In answer to a question from Mr. Storseth, you noted a commercialization gap.
Can any of you respond to that concern I have? What are you going to do? We know that researchers are heading south already. What are we going to do?