I live by a quote: research is global; implementation is local. I totally agree that we have to have what I call fundamental discovery research, but as we do so, we should be looking at research around the world, too, and saying, can we take that and implement that in Canada and be first to market with somebody else's research?
For example, in Sarnia, Ontario, BioAmber just announced a $75 million plant that will make succinic acid and will be de-icing plants with it. It's all through a fermentation using corn. All the research was from elsewhere around the world and we're implementing it here in Ontario.
I totally agree. NSERC and people like that do what I call the high-end discovery. The Ontario Research Fund, at the provincial level, that's the discovery research. I, personally, am more interested in...if we do that research and we expend taxpayer dollars, the last thing I want to see is that being implemented in another country. As Jim Grey, the head of the Integrated Grain Processors Co-operative, says—as we're looking at bringing a big company in to hook up where our ethanol plant is an anchor tenant for a whole new biorefinery—“stolen with pride”.
The concept that $100 million was spent in another country, doing primary research and building it up, but we implement it, and it's our farmers who sell the product to those customers, rather than the other, where we, the taxpayer, have paid for that discovery research, the development research, and then we don't have the receptor capacity to take it.... Part of that deals with the business and the forms and the time to go through the process here.
I absolutely agree that you need both types, but remember that primary research is going on all around the world. In my opinion, we have been overshooting the discovery research, particularly when we have NRC that can do a lot of that, and we should be looking more at the implementation research and the back and forth with industry, the development side.