I actually don't know how to answer that one, in some ways. The discomfort I have is not in the actual nature of the work that is being undertaken; the discomfort is in what I would call other areas that I know should be explored but for which there are not sufficient human resources, frankly, in the academic community in Canada to address all of the issues at the present time.
I have, on a number of occasions, made comments to individuals within the province of Alberta about what I think are the research needs in the oil sands. Two weeks ago, I gave a one-and-a-half-hour seminar to colleagues at Environment Canada, trying to encourage them to become involved to a greater extent in oil sands activity. I'm giving a web seminar to colleagues in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in about two weeks to outline some of what I feel are the issues.
A lot of this has to do with what I said earlier, that up until two or three years ago the level of interest in this was not what it is now. So I've often, frankly, undertaken to encourage colleagues to join me in working in the oil sands on different appropriate issues.
There is a consortium. Please understand that some of the papers I've reported here were done with colleagues from Environment Canada. There are people from the University of Guelph, the University of Windsor, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of Alberta who have participated in this.
Now, have I made pitches in the media with respect to more money for oil sands work? No. I find, frankly, that as a research scientist that is a particularly ineffective way of trying to influence people to give you further resources. I would suggest that perhaps fora like these, or talking to people who are controlling research funding more directly, are more productive.
So it's not a discomfort with the science that is done in the majority of cases, particularly that which is done in a peer-reviewed fashion. It's a discomfort in that there are probably more questions that need to be asked than we're fully drawing our attention to at the present time.