—which really has been in free fall for over two decades. It's something that we need to address in Canada.
If I can just revert back to what the mandate of the Canada Foundation for Innovation is—which I did not expand on during my brief—we are supporting core facilities of all sorts across the country in colleges, CEGEPs, in universities.
I spun off a company myself about 20 years ago, an IT company, and if had it not been for these core facilities and these very sophisticated pieces of equipment that I could have accessed, there is no way I would have been able to raise tens of millions of dollars in venture capital. This is extremely important for the country, plugging into what Mr. Bouchard was saying.