Thank you, Mr. Lemire. That is an excellent question.
I believe that it was Mr. Lexchin who said earlier that the investments from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the CIHR, amount to $1 billion per year. On a per capita basis, medical research in Canada is funded four times less than in the United States. The same goes for research in the natural sciences and engineering.
For decades, investments in basic research have plateaued, while more and more researchers in Canada are attracted by the very good working conditions and access to infrastructures in the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the CFI, and in the Canada Research Chairs program. So we have more and more researchers and less and less funding. Consequently, success rates have dropped dramatically in recent years.
In order to keep our good researchers, we have to keep investing and doing so massively. We have been falling behind for 20 years and we must catch up.