Thank you.
I'm going to touch on the examples my colleague just mentioned to highlight the powerful impact the system has through its community-based research across the province. I will also illustrate how those institutions can serve as incredible levers for invention and innovation. Before I go on, I truly want to commend the Government of Canada for its recent efforts. It's worth mentioning how quickly it deployed programs and how much financial support it provided. Nevertheless, as you will have noticed in our brief, we condemn the fact that a handful of universities in Canada receive the bulk of research dollars. That is essentially the point we'd like to make today.
Canada has a hundred or so universities across its vast territory. My colleague talked about diversity. How is it, then, that research funding is concentrated solely—or rather, mainly—in the university collective known as U15 or universities with faculties of medicine? We can have a full discussion on the subject afterwards, I have no doubt. It's unfortunate because, today, universities are so diverse that a phenomenon like COVID-19 involves not just epidemiology, but also society, the environment, the economy, social factors and gerontology. The impact on senior centres is proof of that. The examples go on and on and on.
Even though our university system does not include a faculty of medicine, we have more than 800 researchers—notably, across all disciplines—collaborating on projects as we speak. If you look at our brief, in boxes 2 and 3, you'll find a list of all the initiatives and studies our researchers are carrying out. You'll see that it's possible not to have a faculty of medicine, but to have, as we do at the Université du Québec à Montréal, a P3 laboratory, a fairly sophisticated epidemiology laboratory. Canada is privileged in that it can count on an amazing academic system. Half of all students enrolled are trained in universities that, combined, receive barely a quarter of research investment. I'm going to run out of time, so I won't go over our three main recommendations. I have no doubt we'll have a chance to talk about them.
I'll conclude on this note. A different funding allocation scheme would help the UQ system achieve its objectives: contribute to pandemic response—because there will indeed be others—strengthen the resilience of populations and organizations and, above all, support a green economic recovery.
We would be pleased to answer any questions you have.
Thank you.