Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for being with us this morning.
Mr. Davidson, as one who has been an academic twice as many years as I have been a politician, I fully agree with the thrust of what you said, particularly the importance of front-end loading research funding, especially given that the government has cut funding for research councils. And I totally agree with you that Australia is eating our lunch with respect to foreign students. That's extremely important for the future and we should get our act together.
I also agree that if you're asking for money you have to be polite to the government, but I don't think you should be so keen to please the government as to say wrong things. I'll give you one example. You say, and I quote, “Canada is leading the G-8 in economic recovery.” That's not a forecast. Forecasters cheat. They may be right; they may be wrong. You say that Canada is leading the G-8 in economic recovery, but if you look at the facts, the latest quarter for which we have information is the second quarter of this year, and Canada was dead last among G-7 countries in growth. Three countries—Japan, France, and Germany—grew. Four countries shrank.