Thank you.
I'm a professor at the University of Toronto, an active neuroscience researcher, funded by CIHR and NSERC, and the director of the largest undergraduate program in the life sciences at the University of Toronto.
My main message today is to ask you to act on the recommendations of Canada's fundamental science review, chaired by David Naylor.
I'll give you a brief example from my own research lab. I have a Ph.D. student in my lab ready to graduate who grew up on the Iran-Iraq border, immigrated to Canada, became a proud Canadian citizen, and has produced a fabulous Ph.D. thesis. She just received a fellowship at Stanford at a Nobel Prize-winning lab and she's excited to go.
I'm excited about the prospect of her returning to Canada, but she's currently questioning that prospect due to the lack of recent investments in investigator-led research funds. We can prevent this loss of highly trained Canadian-invested HQP by supporting the Naylor report.
Thank you.