This particular facility was developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It's simply the best in the world to study the problem of acid rain, but it also then became over time a more valuable facility to study the impacts of climate change, land use development and others.
It was a federal laboratory for many years, and was dropped, as were many others. There are dozens of research basins like that across Canada, where federal research on water was conducted, that were given up by the federal government.
The universities or other groups are trying to operate them. IISD in Winnipeg is trying to keep the experimental lakes area going, but there are many others by the universities of Saskatchewan, Waterloo and McMaster—you name it. We all have our former federal research site that we're trying to keep going.
That has been part of the issue, because these outdoor laboratories, like the experimental lakes area, are invaluable for environmental research and water research. If we don't keep them going, then we lose a legacy that cannot be repeated, particularly when we have rapid climate change. We have to know how these ecosystems operated before that climate change and how they have changed during it as our early warning systems. It's quite precarious to do it now.
I'm a big fan of the Canada Foundation for Innovation. We have put many proposals together. I finished one just two hours ago to support places like this.