I agree with you entirely.
I am going to offer an analogy. I am a philosophy professor, and this analogy is going to surprise some of my colleagues. To me, it's like the support associated with military spending. We can't say we are going to deal with that spending or pay attention to this some other time. At some point, we have to maintain an ongoing, robust capacity in order to support the national interest.
This is also not a partisan issue. The fact that major investments in research have been made under both Liberal and Conservative governments shows us that. We have to see research and innovation as part of the national interest, and therefore we have to make consistent investments over time. If we adopt an approach that involves spending money when things are going well and withdrawing it when things are going badly, our best talents are going to leave the country every time we see budgets shrink. We have to avoid that. This is also not just a matter of our best talents. It affects the next generation too, the people who could become that next generation.
We must therefore make sure there is predictable, ongoing funding so that research is able to develop its full potential.