I can definitely do that.
First of all, I would like to go back to the question from your colleague Ms. Bennett.
In fact, they are all potentially in conflict of interest. There is a vice-president for research. Is he speaking for his university? Should we have former vice-presidents of research? There's also a dean of faculty of medicine. Is he speaking on behalf of his faculty of medicine? Should we have former deans of faculties of medicine?
We want people who are in the thick of the subject because health research changes extremely quickly. We want the country's leaders, people who absolutely and completely know all research aspects, both basic research aspects, which you referred to, and more applied research aspects, commercialization aspects such as aspects of research on health services.
The important thing is to be able to have expertise around the table. We are clearly looking for varied expertise that enables us to respond more effectively to our mission as a whole.
More specifically, it is quite rare for members of the governing council to have to recuse themselves because we do not make financial decisions. Active researchers nevertheless do sit on the governing council, and they may at times feel uncomfortable in certain discussions.
For example, one council member is an active stem cell researcher. When we discussed ethical issues related to stem cell research, that member recused himself. This is a question not only of conflict of interest, but of apparent conflict of interest as well, to which we are very sensitive. We do not want to give the impression that we favour one player over another. We are very sensitive to that.