Thank you, Mr. Chair.
With all due respect to Gerry, I'm going to disagree, which he probably won't be surprised about.
Having said that, I guess, based on this whole thing and the evidence we heard, the only open question to me is, is it not a government decision to do this? Obviously it is. They've done the analysis.
It would seem that the R and D activities are picking up. The questions that are still open to me are how was this communicated and what was the definition of “sustainability plan” going forward? Everybody has a different definition of sustainability plan. To some, sustainability plan means you get your own money from private sources. Other people say “I'm going to develop a sustainability plan that's going to constantly rely on government funding”. Personally, I don't think that's what we should be doing.
For me to say “restore full funding”, to commit to a program over five years—and I'm assuming that's what that means. But Mr. Andrews said “get them through the years”, so I'm not sure what it means: five years, one year? What are we saying here?
I'm just not prepared to commit to that at this point in time. I think “reconsider the decision” is something to say. Maybe it gives the government an opportunity to go back to them and say, “Look, let's make this clear: sustainability means this. We're going to do the funding for this for this long for you to understand and come up with that sustainability plan, and then we're going to be done”.
Right now, I can't support “restore full funding” because I don't know what it means.