Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to our witnesses for being here virtually and at the table.
I'm going to ask a general question. The testimony was excellent today, and I'm looking forward to further submissions and further follow-up. In talking about the issue of superclusters and the whole strategy behind it, I recall that it was originally $800 million. The minister says it will be divided between three to five centres. They added an additional $150 million, so apparently now there are super-duper clusters.
Now we have people and companies that are going to be in and out of these clusters. I wonder about those situations. It's a little bit of a concern to me, in the sense that if you look at that money, it's not a whole lot when you look at the issues we have and start dividing it among five centres. You're looking at $200 million. That can get swallowed up by universities, research, and so forth.
I'm wondering whether or not the strategy with the best bang for our buck should look at medium-sized cities or smaller centres where we'd actually get a higher degree of value, almost like a greenfield project. I represent an area of the auto sector where greenfield sites are their own clusters. We don't need another acronym to describe them. You build a manufacturing plant and you have a competitive advantage to build around it and grow your business, because later on you can add components.
I'll turn it over to Mr. Gold and Mr. Ring. I'd like some general thoughts about how we protect those who don't get enclosed in the superclusters from getting washed out.