On BOREALIS, to be absolutely frank with the members of the committee, so far it's a concept. It's an empty shell. There's nothing there. I would even say it's pretty underwhelming in terms of what has been shown to date. It has been decided that it would be under DRDC, which is the federal lab inside defence. The early signs are that nothing will really be different from before. It's a new entity channelling current programs. I would urge members of this committee to follow BOREALIS's implementation very closely because so far, for the leading research universities, it's very disappointing in terms of the interface and the promise that was communicated. The concept was good. It could have been a Canadian DARPA, or a version of DARPA, but so far it's not, so I want to raise that flag.
In terms of our capabilities, I've spoken to the data, what we represent in terms of the capabilities in the research community. As a country, we have the chance to have this expertise and this intellectual capital. Today's discussion has been focused on procurement, the end of contracts and how that works, but we're not going to have SMEs, we're not going to have companies in defence, if we don't have the talent and the research and development that will allow these companies to be competitive globally.
Again, I would urge the committee to think about the foundations of success for R and D-intensive sectors that represent the defence industry and really focus on the investments that will make this happen. I think we need to build interfaces and pathways that don't exist right now between our universities and the defence department. That is what I'm working on with my group.