I'll give you a very specific example. Last week we announced the discovery grants, which are a large NSERC program. We made the largest investment in discovery grants in Canadian history. Some $588 million went to 5,000 researchers across Canada. What is particularly exciting is that 500 of those grants went to early-career researchers. There was an increase. They got an increase in the funding. They got a stipend as well as 1,700 scholarships for postgrads.
What we hear from the researchers is that they are feeling the difference. They understand that under the previous government, funds stagnated. No one was talking to the research community. It really was a broken relationship that needed repairing. When you stagnate funds it means there are small pools. The previous government added to the challenge by concentrating funds in a few hands.
The last thing they did was to tie research funding. For example, if you wanted a SSHRC grant, it had to have a business outcome. That's not how research works. We are saying the lifeblood of the research ecosystem is our researchers.
My goal is to put our researchers and our students at the centre of everything we do and to ensure that they have their funding, their labs and tools and digital tools.