Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses.
I'll let my academic background trump my banking background and focus on issues of innovation, access, and research. I am very proud of what I think is one of the major Chrétien or Martin legacies, in terms of a huge increase in funding for innovation, universities, research, students, etc.
I am disturbed that this government is not following through on that. I don't expect you to necessarily support it, but I think the facts bear it out. I do think it's a major issue.
I will begin with Dr. Bernstein. I agree with virtually everything you said, except the point about necessarily favouring even more health research over other kinds of research.
If we were back in government, I think we should continue with the Martin-Chrétien legacy of innovation and so on. But it seems to me that the next stage might be to do more in the area of commercialization. Academics have a tendency to focus on pure research, and that's great, but we also want to show benefits in a new economy by bringing those things to market.
My question to you is, how should we restructure, innovate, or create new programs to focus—if we do want to focus—in addition to what we've always done and have a new emphasis on commercialization?