In my view—but I could just as easily talk about “our view” since we have a consensus on this at Semex—a more comprehensive and long-term policy on research is needed. If we want to attract leading researchers, they need to feel they will have long-term support, either from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada or from universities. We need to build critical masses in research.
Research is paramount to us. The committee is studying innovation, and in the world of animal genetics, things move along quite quickly. When research leads to practical technologies that can be implemented profitably, progress happens fairly fast. In genomics, for example, back in 2008, we were able to start applying research findings we'd obtained that same year. A year later, Canada had formal genomics testing practices. It all happened pretty quickly.
On our end, the problem has more to do with research than innovation. We have a pretty solid tradition of innovation when it comes to dairy cattle genetics.