One thing we've seen recently is interesting, and it's not even remarked internationally. Twenty-five years ago, Canada was thinking about what it was going to do in higher education, and at the time, in the 1990s, Canada had an okay domestic higher-education system. However, it had kind of moved from where it had been in the 1960s, when Canada was very much importing almost everything. By the 1990s, we had a pretty good domestic side.
There was a debate in Canada about facing this new century. We had talked already about climate change. We were talking about digital and how we were going to face it, and there was a debate. Do we import it, do we buy it or do we make it? Do we have to do it ourselves or can we import it? The decision was that, if we were not in the global effort regarding research and science, we wouldn't even know what to import. We had to be part of that global effort.
Canada decided that it was going to do it through investing in talent. That's why it built the Canada research chairs program. It built a whole series in our facilities, as another member was saying earlier.
My sense at least is that in a number of areas we're on the world stage. We have some access to the global pool of knowledge, but what are we going to do to take that to the next level? How are we going to move it now, especially now that the private sector is moving towards innovation very rapidly in all sectors? There's competitive pressure everywhere. Innovation is in the public and private sectors and the non-profit sector, and they're collaborating everywhere.
Our universities, given the strategy that was developed years ago and has continued, have deep links with their communities and with businesses. This is unique in many ways internationally. I was talking to colleagues in Europe, and recently someone who was visiting Israel was being asked why universities in Canada were so connected with the private sector and with their communities. That's very unusual. In other countries, they build separate institutions that are not connected to the main universities.
This turns out to be, I think, the real strength for Canada, because as your committee has been studying this year, this is really about the circulation of people. It's about talented people moving across campuses, into the communities, into companies and back and so on, and we're comfortable with that.