Thank you very much.
Actually, the question came up, how do we convince taxpayers? The reality is that for that little machine there are over 10,000 employees, and not all of them have gone to university. There is the production side, putting these machines together.
I'm glad you mentioned quantum computing, because IQC is in Waterloo and it points to a number of things. They were able to attract a critical mass, and in the case of Dr. Raymond Laflamme, who is actually a Canadian who was down in Texas, he was brought back to head IQC. Mr. Laflamme is at the top of the whole quantum industry. He was Hawking's star student.
They have put together a critical mass around this, and we're leaders right now in this technology. But the rest of the world is starting to focus on it. So unless we continue to be leaders and we build on what we have, we can lose it to somebody else. The potential for quantum is so huge, it would be a paradigm shift. Dick Tracy's world is what you're essentially talking about once you get into that miniaturization, where you actually harness the positives and negatives in the atom. It's mind-boggling. But if we do manage to be at the forefront, the kind of job creation that leads to, and the wealth it leads to as well, is huge.
So the question for government is that we're at the forefront in this research; are we going to build on it? Are we going to stay at the forefront? There are absolutely no guarantees that we will be the ones who will benefit from it, but we have a good chance of doing so. Just as with any other research that we engage in, it touches all sorts of people who never go to university.
As one thing more in terms of the climate for promoting science, Kitchener-Waterloo is known for its Oktoberfest. A couple of years ago we had EinsteinFest, which came around the same time as Oktoberfest, celebrating Einstein's 100th birthday. It was huge. The popularity and the number of people who went through there was just amazing. People actually came in and got really excited by science. Yes, there's a real need for scientists to explain what they do, but it can be incredibly exciting.
Getting back to the panel, I think what we have to be keen on is being niche researchers. We can't do everything, and you said that. We have to identify what we're good at and where it makes sense to invest to keep it going. It doesn't do much good to throw tens of millions of dollars, or hundreds of million of dollars, at it and then abandon it. Once we make that commitment, it really is important that we go through with it, along with the peer review to make sure we're on track.