Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses.
I want to direct my first question to Dr. Watters. With respect to the disparity between the United States and Canada in terms of post-doctoral or doctoral education in particular, this is a question that's kind of dear to my heart. Actually, it's dearer to my wallet, because I have a son in a doctoral program in the United States, I have a daughter in a master's program in Canada, and I have another daughter who's about to go into a master's program and hasn't made up her mind about where she's going to go.
When my son did his analysis of the program he wanted to do, Canadian universities weren't even in the league, frankly, as far as the support that was available for him was concerned. This morning we had a presentation from the polytechnics, part of which showed that the universities eat all the research money and leave nothing available for the polytechnics for application of that research. My question to you is, in effect, twofold. How could you as universities be receiving enormous amounts of money, initiated primarily under the Martin-Chrétien years but hopefully not entirely cut off by this government, and yet still not be competitive with American universities in particular?