Yes, I think you make the right point. We spoke to a number of your colleagues on the Hill in February and made this point. I hope it will make the agenda of budget 2021. Certainly it won't be for this year, as it's already gone. It's important, because otherwise, we will lose our competitiveness with other countries that we have built over the years. In particular, the CIHR or NSERC tri-council open operating grants that fund basic research are very necessary.
I heard from the persons that I and my colleagues from the CSMB board spoke to that 2021 may be a good year for this to be back on the agenda, but this was at a time when COVID-19 was not yet on everyone's agenda, in the early February phase. I hope that budget 2021 will recognize the value of basic science for reacting to pandemics like this and the value of training people. Grants that come in the lab pay Ph.D. students, technicians and post-docs, and it trains them in this way. They will end up in all kinds of biomedicine and biotechnology professions. They may even go to Saskatchewan and develop vaccines with Volker Gerdts, so this is very valuable.
I don't have to underline that the Naylor report was commissioned by the government. It was a very high-level panel, and the recommendations were very well thought through. We would just advocate that we really implement these recommendations.