Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses.
I'm encouraged by some of the testimony we heard today. I do believe that solutions for the major problems our country is facing can be found through research and through our institutes across Canada working on those problems that face Canadians.
I heard from the testimony that it's important to invest in the best possible research that has impacts on our society, that we have to put an impact lens on this as to how it affects Canadians, and that the results on the ground need to be measured.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, Mr. Miller, but I think you said that there is no bright future for Canada without the research that gets done in Canada. I would say that there is research that falls into those categories. I believe a capstone project would help drive research in getting towards those goals that impact Canada and that it's important.
It's just a little bit troubling when we see what we have spent money on. There are two million Canadians right now who are relying on food banks to eat. One in four Canadians is forgoing meals because they can't afford to feed themselves. Meanwhile, at the University of British Columbia, for $20,000—I wonder how many meals we could feed on that—they studied gender politics and Peruvian rock music—not Canadian, but Peruvian.
Does anyone want to defend that or explain that? If not, that's all right.
The next one we would have is large-scale archaeological video game analysis. This one cost $280,000 that taxpayers paid to research large-scale archaeological video game analysis. Does anyone want to take a stab at that one?