Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your comments. I had hoped to start with Councillor Carroll, but I think she just stepped out for a moment, so perhaps I'll start with the Ontario universities and also the Ontario College of Art and Design.
It's a question I've asked of several other colleges and universities we've been hearing from across the country. There's a general “ask” for greater funding of research. I understand the need for that, and I think it's generally a good thing that we encourage research in our universities and colleges.
Recently I was in China with a parliamentary committee. I visited a number of universities there. I learned that the Chinese government concentrates on certain areas of research to develop their economy. Of course, in their kind of economy and government structure, it's a lot easier to do that than it would be in ours. But what I generally hear from universities is let's increase funding, and we'll figure out where to put the money and what to research. I often hear from the colleges that it should be more targeted.
Should we have a national strategy to target our research dollar? Given that we're a relatively small country, we have relatively limited resources. Should we target our resources in certain areas like design, or should we just let researchers go off in whatever direction they think best?