Thanks very much, Chair.
Hello to everyone, and thank you for your testimony.
In particular, I want to say hello to President McCauley. Full disclosure, I'm an alum of the University of Calgary, and I taught in the leadership and development program for a period of time. I have great admiration and respect for the university and for what it does.
When you were talking about your four recommendations, you talked about political independence, and Mr. Singh just also spoke to political independence.
On the flight here, I was preparing some questions. Sometimes when you're flying from Sydney to Toronto and then to Ottawa, the flight is delayed or cancelled, so you have plenty of time to think. I was watching a movie and preparing my questions. I was watching Ted Lasso, who mentioned a quote attributed to Walt Whitman that we need to be less judgmental and be more curious.
This, to me, ties into political independence. Whether it's a left-wing government, a centrist government or a right-wing government, we don't want political interference in research. It's tempting even for someone like me. When I look at certain research projects I say, “My God, that's esoteric. My God, what is the relevance?”
I think of researchers like Geoffrey Hinton, who is a pioneer in AI. I would assume that if we brought Dr. Hinton here, he would say, “You know, when I was starting out, there were a lot of questions about the research I was doing in AI.” We could also choose another researcher in advanced technology, so I think we need to be careful.
With that in mind, can you unpack a bit of why it is so important that politicians and political parties—because we do have oversight, to a certain degree—know our lane and respect the institutions that are there to do the research?