Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our presenters.
For those of you who haven't presented to a committee meeting and pre-budget consultation before, take no offence if we don't ask questions of everyone. It's not that we don't listen and hear your presentations. It's just that we don't have enough time to ask questions of everybody.
So we do appreciate the input, and it is all recorded. I don't know if the chair has explained that. We do take all of the presentations into account and we do appreciate them.
Having said that, we're with a very interesting challenge this year in trying to wind down.... I was glad to hear Mr. Sinclair reaffirm that fact, that our spending was short term and that we're in a deficit position and that we need to find a way to control spending.
In that context, that's what we need to take forward as recommendations. That's not to discredit any of your suggestions at all, and please don't take it that way.
To Mr. George from McMaster University, commercialization is so critical. I think you have probably already answered that question, so I won't ask about that. But competing in areas of expertise has always been a bit of a challenge for me. We hear from all sides how important it is to provide an education to our children so they can become the leaders of the future and drive our economy. Universities continue to compete for expertise and areas of expertise. I'm sure you've dealt with this, that universities are looking for money to compete against each other.
Is there a way to focus specialization so that we can focus the valuable taxpayers' dollars we have? I hope I'm explaining this properly.