Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for being here with us this afternoon.
I've spent twice as many years in education as in politics, so I thought I would start with the two educational representatives here.
My first question is to Mr. Shillington, about his suggestion that the federal government should put more money into supporting applied research by colleges. I tend to agree with that. My observation is that the federal government, in supporting research over the years, has been very ungenerous to colleges as distinct from universities. My question is, do you agree with that, and why is it? Is it a jurisdictional thing, that colleges are more the creatures of provinces than are universities? How do you see that? This is not the first time we've heard a proposal like this, and it doesn't seem to have gone very far. I think that in principle it's a good thing, but what are the impediments?