I'd love to have a long conversation with you about it. I will confess that in a previous life I was a deputy minister for economic development and trade for about 10 years or so in the Ontario government, so I'm obsessed with this issue.
Yes, I do think we have a problem in Canada. I do think we have a problem with being entrepreneurial. I do think we have a problem with management, with risk. I think we're risk-averse. I think we need to manage risk. I think we need to accept risk and I think we need to look at the levers.
One of the things I don't see is a lack of entrepreneurship in students. I don't see risk-aversion in students. You know, somehow they come in....
We want them to accept risk. And the creativity is amazing.
What we need is, firstly, the capacity to get them doing research. It's one of the things, by the way, that the University of Toronto--not being parochial for a minute--does extremely well. Because of the excellence of faculties, every student has an opportunity to do research.
So it's getting those juices going. That begins to do it, but you really need a better system of faculty-student engagement. You need to make sure that when they do research, it doesn't cost the institution.
I will take 40 seconds and just speak to that issue. It sounds odd when people say, “What are you talking about, the full cost of research?” What I will say is it's the research that will help us be competitive internationally. Researchers get grants, and those grants go to the research. What they don't get is all the overhead.
So it's like saying, “I'm going to give this to you, but I'm not going to give you the lights, I'm not going to give you the power, I'm not going to give you the chairs to sit on, and I'm not going to give you the desks.” This is real. Where does it come from? It comes from the operating grants to the university to support the research, and that's why “full cost of research” is what we're talking about.
Now, to be fair, the province does give 40¢ on the dollar. But the federal government gives 20¢ on the dollar. This has been a long problem: you get a grant, but it's on the backs of the undergraduate experience to pay for the research that's going on.
That's why it's a real problem. It's a serious problem. It's not a money grab here. It's a serious problem.