I personally feel that it is important to maintain funding for what is called “blue sky research”, meaning research that can go anywhere and find anything.
I have seen you all with your BlackBerrys this morning. Maxwell's equations form the basis for the transmission of electronic signals. Fifty years passed before Hertz and Marconi put them to work. I feel sure that, these days, Mr. Maxwell would not have received any funding, so no one would have a cell phone. We have to keep funding discovery research.
Of course, we have to maintain an overall balance between basic research, applied research and subsequently the commercialization of research. Otherwise, discovery research will no longer exist. We may well have brought a lot of things to market, but there will be nothing coming down the pipeline. We have to keep an idea going until it becomes commercial, in a sequence and including all the feedback loops. So granting agencies play a very important role, that of funding basic research. Genome Canada, for example, has funded research that, for the moment, has not led to a lot of commercial applications. But you have to learn to walk before you can run, if I can put it that way.