I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Alper speak about STIC and its vision for its work. He was very clear that STIC was going to be reactive to questions from the departments or from cabinet, that he was not performing the duty of foresight. There's only one person who does foresight in this country, compared to, say, 26 in the U.K.
We do not have the capacity to look for what many of you were asking questions about: what the next trend is going to be, what is going to happen in the future. Government researchers and scientists are the only group who have the capability to be sustained for a long time, able to be called into duty if we should have something happen like a SARS incident or any epidemic. You cannot, without a proper group that's looking at the future, and STIC is not going to, and they have said they're not going to.
You need to have people on the ground who are ready to answer the call of Canadians for the health and welfare of Canadians. We may have some groups who are not working in a commercializable sector of science and technology but are there to offer advice at any moment and who are the best and the brightest in the world. That calls for foresight, and it is not going to be done by STIC or Dr. Alper.