Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here this afternoon, and thanks for your patience, by the way, with all the disruption.
It's often very difficult to measure the public policy benefits of your organizations. You sometimes can't measure that benefit, or whether or not the public got their money's worth by whether or not you're financially self-sufficient. I think that's a very important point to make.
From what I saw in our last visit out west, I believe our public is getting their money's worth. Monsieur Vincent hit the nail right on the head when he said you can't build half a car. Once we have committed to the capital expenditures, we have to commit to the long-term operating costs. It doesn't make any sense for us not to do that.
Now, I'd like to know, since CFI and NSERC and these funding organizations provide only 3% of your funding--sorry, it's only 3% of what they provide--whether you feel that there should be a separate structure for big science. In other words, should there be a budget within the industry department to fund big science projects--because they are quite different--or are you convinced that the peer review that comes with these funding organizations is important?