Thank you very much.
I'd like to point out to the committee that it's one thing for a department that's meant to be supporting a sector. The response would be more direct. For a department that's basically a regulatory department, the answer to your question poses some potential problems.
I think of a research program we had, for example, with respect to cleanup of contaminated sediment in the Great Lakes. We developed new methods of cleaning up. That has been licensed now to a global company in Calgary, which has done the Boston harbour, the Hong Kong harbour, etc. Ironically, they haven't done the Great Lakes. But we always worry that if that company were to show up and want to do a major project in Canada, it would face an environmental assessment that our minister would end up having a role in, and technologies we developed could somehow be part of that. It puts the minister in a kind of a semi-awkward situation.