The federal government has an important role to play in facilitating creative, innovative research. It does that by giving money to the granting councils, it does that by giving money through other programs, and it does that by enabling the knowledge base in society. That's why we've been particularly concerned with what we see to be the dismemberment of Library and Archives Canada. The ability to study, and learn from, our history is being seriously damaged. We have a website—savelac.ca—that goes into considerable detail, more than I have time to even begin to address here. That's why we're so concerned about the elimination of the mandatory long-form census: there's all sorts of research and information that businesses, communities, and researchers need that just simply is not available. That's one side.
In terms of funding for the granting councils, I certainly understand from politicians' point of view how it makes sense to say that we have this need in this area, so let's concentrate our research dollars there. If one looks historically, there's just a mountain of evidence—I'm glad to share it with the committee—that says that ideas that are being investigated by some obscure researcher looking at molecular variations that seem irrelevant to anything turn out to result in a Nobel Prize and, for researcher Paul Burg at Stanford, to be the basis of the entire biotech industry today.
The difficulty here is pressure. You have limited resources. You want to make sure they're spent best. I guess what we're suggesting is that the best way you can achieve that objective is by giving the money through the granting council so that it is scientific and research expertise that makes those difficult decisions. It's virtually impossible for the rest of us to do that. That means also ensuring that the people you appoint to the governing councils of each of the funding agencies are active researchers and scientists. The percentage of them who are has been diminishing over the last decade, and that's a concern.