Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here. It's been a very interesting discussion.
Dr. Mintz, I want to start with you. You touched on this already a little bit today. I have been going back and reading some of your past comments.
I know in the past you've talked about how these types of programs can be ripe for political meddling. In one of your interviews you talked about how SIF—the strategic innovation fund—was the sort of fund that could be mishandled. This is from an article back in 2018 in the National Post, written by Jesse Snyder.
Sorry. I just want to go back to my notes.
Interestingly about SIF—and we had this discussion the other day—there's a large regional disparity in terms of how funds are allocated in that program. For example, my home province of Manitoba received $30 million, or about $22 per capita, out of the over $2 billion in funding in that program. In Ontario, it was well over $60, as well as in Quebec and British Columbia.
If you were to advise us or if you were hired to advise government on what measures could be taken to reduce the likelihood of political meddling in these sorts of situations, what types of alternatives could government adopt to make these types of programs more arm's length and credible in the eyes of the public?