I think there needs to be a national strategy. I think there have to be some goals put down using the input of people who really understand what's going on out there, because when you're asking me how they predict, I think that's part of our issue.
The other thing that most definitely can be done, if we're not going to invent new dollars, is to look at the dollars we actually are expending and make sure the dollars are going to the right institutions that are actually going to produce the kinds of quality people we need with respect to the skill gaps. So that involves funding the infrastructure of these institutions and recognizing the critical mass that these organizations represent.
The other piece, most definitely, is the applied research. There is a very glaring deficiency there. Something like 92% of the $11 billion in research investment has gone to pure research, so it would seem that one of the things that could be done fairly easily, I think, is to make sure that the criteria of the funding agencies are actually reflective of and are changed to reflect what is involved when we talk about applied research.
It means perhaps creating research chairs that are actually dedicated to applied research, and enhancing the capacity of these institutions to actually do applied research, because that's where you start helping the SMEs.
When I quote those numbers from the CME, what I'm really trying to say to you is that SMEs don't have the resources. They don't have the infrastructure. They don't necessarily need to have the infrastructure because there is a potential resource here, which, if supported and leveraged, would be an existing entity that just needed more help in order to be more responsive to the market needs of the SMEs and certainly of large business as well. We work with a lot of large companies.