Thank you, Mr. Rajotte, and thank you for the invitation to be with you this morning to share our views on the strategic role that Canada's universities can play in facilitating commerce and enabling wealth creation for Canadians.
McMaster endorses the presentations you will hear from the Council of Ontario Universities and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. We urge you to support their priorities.
In our McMaster brief, we take a narrower focus that will directly impact on the prosperity agenda. Economic prosperity is driven by increased competitiveness, which in turn is driven by an increase in productivity enabled by innovation. It draws increasingly on intellectual resources found in universities among our researchers and our graduates.
Indeed, our universities are called upon to become more entrepreneurial in their dealings with industry, particularly the knowledge-intensive sectors. McMaster University, located in Hamilton, Ontario, is one of Canada's most research-intensive universities, with an annual research income of more than $350 million. McMaster, like other research-intensive universities, has a particular opportunity and responsibility to engage in economic and social development in our communities. At McMaster, our traditional mandate of education, research, and service is enhanced by our focused development of university-industry partnerships, spinoff companies, and knowledge transfer, supported by a full range of incubator and technology transfer facilities.
Our city and surrounding region have felt the impact of this economic downturn deeply. For Hamilton, the expectations of our university and the McMaster Innovation Park to be a catalyst for economic revitalization and renewal are huge. McMaster is committed to doing its part. Ensuring this happens effectively and efficiently will require strategic investments from the federal government, building on the past successes with Advantage Canada and the science and technology strategy.
McMaster's vice-president of research and international affairs, Mo Elbestawi, will share with you our thoughts on some specific steps we recommend for your consideration.