First of all, I can only state what I know. I know for a fact that there's a heavy presence in the U.K. on the board of MRC of the biopharmaceutical sector, and I must say that they are fairly successful at curbing the trend and doing things differently in terms of innovation and public-private partnership. I think it has certainly been a major plus in that country.
I am also familiar with the CNRS in France, where there have also been, as you know, members on the board from the biopharmaceutical sector. There again, I can see only positive aspects. It's obvious that I would not have recommended Dr. Prigent to Minister Aglukkaq if I didn't feel it was an area where I thought we needed to do better.
As you know very well, we are in the midst of an economic downturn. I happen to believe that the way we're going to get out of it for good is through research and innovation, and it's not the public sector alone that's going to do it. It's the public sector and the private sector, and we have to work together. We have to understand what the needs of the private sector are. The private sector must understand where the public sector is going. We have to join our efforts. As Dr. Prigent mentioned, when I was head of the FRSQ in Quebec, we did that in a variety of initiatives.
I can tell you that we're not talking here about the protection of the intellectual property of a specific company. We're talking about areas at the pre-competitive level, where research benefits everyone. It benefits the public sector. It benefits Canadians, and of course it also benefits the private sector. That's what we want, isn't it? We want the private sector to invest more. We don't want to see them investing outside Canada. On the contrary, we want them to come back and invest in Canada so that we can actually gain economically from R and D investments.
I think we have a role to play in helping them do their job and doing our job better. It's our mandate. It's in the act.