The foundation has been in operation since the early 2000s. I believe that Mr. Johnson was at this committee the other day and said it has spent over $90 million supporting Ph.D. scholars and academic fellows. It's a unique program that brings together some of the most brilliant scholars in the humanities and social sciences, senior academics, as well as people from outside of the academic world, so that you have a kind of intergenerational, intersectoral and interdisciplinary approach.
The way the foundation evolved...at least when I was there, I thought it was very important that while we gave out very generous scholarships that enabled these Ph.D. candidates to do well with respect to their studies, the value-add of the foundation would be their exposure to people from different walks of life and their exposure to Canada.
We made a very significant effort every year to get people out to remote places in the country to meet people who were not academics, to meet ordinary Canadians, business people, students. We had a program whereby we had scholars and fellows going into high schools, talking to students about their research in a way that they could understand and also as a way of getting some people to dream a little about what they themselves might accomplish.
A lot of our scholars came from very disadvantaged backgrounds. We had one who was homeless and almost landed in prison. He pulled his life together and became a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto. I believe he was mentioned at another committee—Jesse Thistle.
There's another one whose family came from Ghana when he was eight years old and was very, very poor. He was living in social housing in Toronto. When he grew up, he ended up with a Ph.D. in history from Yale, taught at Harvard, is now teaching at McGill and has just won an award for the best teacher.
There are some really inspiring stories coming out of the foundation. I think it has done stellar work.
One of the other things we wanted to do was to ensure that the scholars we had understood how government worked. We had the opportunity to meet with public servants and with people in the Library of Parliament to learn how to engage with Parliament, for example, and to provide a rounding experience for them.
I hope that answers your question.