That's a comment on the first one.
On the big science projects, I think that is a real issue. We do...“struggle” is perhaps too strong a term. How do you deal with those fundamental investments that have been made, which are quite beneficial, and how do you structure an appropriate government instrument to deal with those on a one-off basis, as we did with the synchrotron or their other approaches?
Large programs are hard to fit because all of these are one-offs. They're one of the types of initiatives. To try to develop a big science program, how much money do you put into it? What do you force-feed? To establish program parameters around such things would be quite complicated.
We at the officials level would welcome any advice your committee has in regard to this. To start with, what is big science? Is it more than $50 million, under $300,000? What is the national government's role? What is the provincial government's role? What is the role of the private sector? What are the governance elements? By governance, I mean who's on the boards and what outreach do they have towards the private sector?
So if your committee has advice in terms of how one, from a governmental perspective, should look at this, we would welcome any thoughts.
