Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear here today on behalf of NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, an organization I joined last January as its president. Our full name may be hard to remember, but our vision should not be.
NSERC's vision is to help make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators for the benefit of all Canadians. We all realize that in a knowledge-based society, access to expertise, information, and knowledge is crucial, but it is not sufficient. We need to use information with creativity, to discover new knowledge and apply it in novel ways. That is the springboard to our future prosperity as a country and as a people.
Let me quote from one of our great Canadian engineers and researchers, Dr. Indira Samarasekera, who's the president of the University of Alberta. She said, “Canada's competitive advantage rests neither in resources, nor knowledge, but in the ingenuity of people who will combine resources and knowledge in new ways.”
Other countries are recognizing the importance of investing in their people's talent--the U.S., India, Japan, Germany, Korea, China. The list is very long. For us in Canada it is doubly important because in terms of population we are a small country. We must ensure that our people have the opportunity to develop to their full potential and contribute to the building of a strong Canadian society and economy. We cannot afford to waste any human talent in this country.
What does NSERC do? The natural sciences and engineering go to the heart of Canada's competitiveness and productivity. NSERC is an essential part of Canada's research and innovation infrastructure. We are responsible for insuring that Canada has a solid knowledge and expertise base in science and engineering. We manage a well-balanced portfolio of investments in people, discovery and innovation with programs that support research and advanced training at Canadian universities and colleges.
We are a dynamic organization. Throughout our existence, we have adapted our programs to anticipate the needs of our community and to provide Canada with an environment that stimulates research and innovation. We are guided by four important values: excellence, relevance, impact and accountability.
It is extremely important to us to demonstrate to Canadians that we use the money for which they make us responsible to maximum impact and for the benefit of our country. We continually track our performance through numerical indicators and have thorough evaluations of our programs on a cyclical basis.
In our written presentation, we describe two major reinvestment thrusts that will enable us to maintain a solid foundation in science and engineering. They will also give us the capacity to take advantage of strategic opportunities. Our goal is to maximize impact and benefits to Canada.
Let me return to Dr. Samarasekera's quote: “Canada's competitive advantage rests neither in resources, nor knowledge, but in the ingenuity of people who will combine resources and knowledge in new ways.” She could be talking about Canada's competitive advantage in oil sands, where our ingenuity has led to economically viable processes for extraction, or about the BlackBerry, whose creation and development rests on both basic and applied research. The BlackBerry is not a low-hanging fruit. A lot of R and D and talented creative people have contributed to this great Canadian success.
Our vision at NSERC to help make Canada a country of discoverers and innovators sees a future with many more such great Canadian achievements.
Merci beaucoup.