Yes, I was going to mention that.
I'd like to thank the committee for the chance to appear before you. We did submit a brief earlier, and I hope you have all had a chance to look at it.
The Partnership Group for Science and Engineering is an umbrella group for an association of more than 25 professional and scientific organizations. I guess we fall into the category of experts and stakeholders mentioned by our first witness. We certainly would like the government to listen to experts and stakeholders as well as the general public. Of course, we are very interested in educating and interacting with the general public ourselves.
I guess we're best known for the bacon and eggheads breakfast, but we do a number of other things. We work in partnership with government to try to advance research and innovation for the benefit of all sectors of Canadian society.
Our brief basically addressed two of the themes, the same two themes that were addressed by the science centres, namely, the matter of science advice to government and big science projects vis-à-vis Canada's position in global science and technology.
We have four recommendations in our brief: one, strengthen the mechanisms for independent scientific advice to government; two, reinvest in the federal research infrastructure in science for the public good; three, encourage the archiving of scientific data as a legacy for comparative purposes and analysis as a base for future development; and four, adopt a strategic approach to investment in big science initiatives and international science partnerships.
I'll briefly elaborate on those four recommendations.
The government has recently moved to streamline its external advisory system by replacing a number of previous advisory bodies by the new Science, Technology and Innovation Council, or STIC. PGSE thinks this is an excellent move that should consolidate the science advice to government.