I happen to be the assistant deputy minister responsible for those national energy labs, so I can speak to this with some confidence.
Pretty much every single project that we carry out in those national facilities is done in partnership with companies and universities. Why? It's not just because we want to have friends along the way; we're looking for impact. That's really the measure of success for us. For us, being able to work on things that matter and that will eventually be adopted is the best measure of success. It's one thing to develop great ideas, but if they don't go anywhere, we're not having much of an impact on the country and the country's performance. So we will really make it a necessary condition that we have an industry partner or a university partner in order to advance those projects.
Going forward we aim to make those facilities even more available, especially for smaller firms that don't have the facilities or the capital to have this kind of fancy equipment, and to have the expertise along the way to manage those. You need highly trained technicians. Some of those pieces of equipment could be dangerous if mismanaged or operated. We need to train engineers who can assist those small firms in perfecting the technology. Then they will be able to sell it both domestically and abroad.
Using this as a model, we've seen it happening in our own facilities. Also in the U.S. they've been experimenting with this to a greater degree. We think it has a lot of merit. Obviously, the small firms would be delighted to benefit from such expertise. We think it's something that should be pursued on a priority basis.