Thank you, Madam Chair, and congratulations on your election as chair of this committee.
It's such an honour to serve on this inaugural committee, a very special committee. I'm very pleased to be able to serve with such esteemed members from all parties. I think we can work together and accomplish a lot. I'm looking forward to what we can do.
Because I am new, I will give you a bit of background on where I come from. I represent Kitchener South—Hespeler, which is in the region of Waterloo. It's commonly referred to as the western end of the innovation corridor, which is anchored by Toronto at the other end. We have a lot of research capability in Waterloo. Probably many of you are familiar with the University of Waterloo.
I'll impinge a bit on Lloyd Longfield's area of Guelph as well. In an area of about 600,000 people, we have three esteemed universities. The University of Guelph is renowned for research in agriculture and food.
The University of Waterloo, which everyone thinks of for tech and math, is certainly renowned for that, but there's also a lot of expertise in robotics. I toured the university with the president fairly recently, within the last month—we have a new president—and they have a lot of research there.
In robotics, I see a lot of opportunity for the medical field. We all know that we have severe shortages of health care workers, and I think there's a lot of opportunity. They now have very friendly robots that aren't in cages in manufacturing plants anymore and can actually deliver a lot of health care services. That might be something that we have an opportunity in.
Also, there is sustainable aviation, and they're really looking at that. In a country as large as Canada, we do have to fly around—many of us even to get to our jobs here in Ottawa—but we need to make aviation more sustainable and environmentally friendly. I was happy to see that there is research going on in that area. Also, there's the Perimeter Institute, the quantum institute.
We might want to do a road trip to some of the various universities—I know that Chad has McMaster, and we also have the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary—to see what everyone is doing.
I agree with what Mr. Cannings said earlier. I think we need to do an overview at some point, perhaps, to see what the strengths of Canadian research are, what the gaps are and where we need to maybe pick up the pace, and to see what the opportunities are.
That's all I'll say now. I ramble too much, but I'm very excited about the work ahead of us and being part of this group and seeing what we can accomplish together.