Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all our witnesses. For full disclosure, I was a math and physics teacher, but I also didn't work with Mr. Bindra. So we'll work our way down the line on that.
In my riding I have Red Deer College and Olds College. They do some amazing work with our local industry and then engage globally. These are critical things that are required, and each of us can tell fantastic stories about the great institutions we have.
There's a discussion on the agriculture side of things. Mr. Nantel, you brought it up, and Lloyd talked about it as well, You described your gluten-free pasta, and so on. We started looking at things that are market driven, not necessarily health driven. As we are aware, only 0.7% of the population has a problem with gluten, and if you can increase it to 3% or 4% for that market share, unfortunately, you're getting 2.3% of the population that isn't getting the benefit from gluten, which is what their body needs.
Not only do you have IT groups, but you also have marketing groups as well that tie into this. I think it's important. The reason I mention that is that we have the same issue on GMOs and so many other things where, exactly as you said, you can design, have the plants that can reduce the amount of chemical that you require, the precision agriculture that is needed, so you are using less energy and fewer pesticides, but that never gets through because other forces continue to speak to that. That was my soapbox. I appreciate that opportunity.
One of the key things we're looking at is how we find ways for the private sector to work with academic institutions. I'm looking at a report that we got from the Association of University Technology Managers. They looked at ideas like ease of contracting, the ownership of arising IP and the confidentiality associated with that. Are these issues that the colleges and universities discuss, and do you have some way of going forward with those types of programs?