Thank you for that question.
You've raised a really important question, and I want to be very clear to this committee. It is not either-or. You need basic and you need applied—you need both. We start here with fundamental research, and that's to have our new discoveries, whether it's of a new battery, a new BlackBerry, or a new therapy. Then we want to move it through a continuum to the commercialization of that idea and to selling that product and creating jobs.
We have to ensure that those links are very tight all along the way. In Canada we have suffered through the valley of death.
I also want to point out the role that our colleges and our polytechnic institutes can play. We have discovery research, which is often done at the universities. At the colleges and polytechnics, they do really important work. They are embedded in their communities. They can often do good social innovation projects, but they can also respond very quickly to industry's needs. A company, a small or medium-sized business, may come to a college with a problem that the college can respond to quickly.
I was out in Winnipeg for the annual meeting, and just hearing the work with which our colleges were able to help, whether for the wine industry or to help a small company out in Winnipeg....
Thank you for the question. We absolutely need both.