Thank you for your kind words and for the work you are doing.
It is not just a problem of money. If all you do is put more money into research, that will not solve the problems we have in Canada in research and innovation, nor will it solve anything if all you do is put a capstone organization in place. There has to be speedy progress on the capstone organization and there must be follow-through on the financial commitments. In fact, we have already fallen well behind in recent years, as compared to the other countries we are competing with.
If we do nothing but increase funding, that will make some researchers happy but it will not be sufficient to fill some of the gaps that the research ecosystem is experiencing in Canada at present. What is needed is work on both the governance framework and funding at the same time. If all you do is put the capstone organization in place rather than increasing funding, you are redistributing the existing funds over a greater number of missions and we will find ourselves in a situation that will turn out to be worse than before.
Our colleagues at UK Research and Innovation in the United Kingdom have told us that during the initial years after UKRI was set up, they were promised a lot of money and a new organization. Once the new organization was put in place, they did not receive the money promised. For years, they have had to deal with an administrative labyrinth, to no avail.
I urge you to see this as two parts of a whole. It's as if I said to you: Do you want a car or some gas? Without one or the other, you are not going to get very far. You need both. The capstone organization is the new car, and the gas is the additional budget.