Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, Minister.
This is my first time at this committee so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to have this brief chat with you.
Research and development dollars—Mr. Richardson will remember this—were severely cut back in the nineties under a previous government, and so to have some impact in starting towards redeeming some of that is really important.
When we look at the job losses that we've had in the Hamilton area, where I'm from, and London and Windsor, and then look at these estimates, it seems that FedDev funding is being shifted from the southern part of the province to a more easterly part—and, of course, as you've indicated in your testimony, from community and business development to technological development.
What was the overall strategy behind that particular move? There is quite a bit of money being shifted around. When we looked at the estimates it was in the tens of millions of dollars. You started to speak about the strategic outcome in your presentation. If you could go into a little more depth about that, I'd appreciate it.