Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to say hello to the witnesses and thank them for being with us this evening.
My questions are for Mr. Charbonneau.
Mr. Charbonneau, it was quite telling to hear the statistics you shared in your opening statement. They speak volumes. You said that the number of full-time researchers per million inhabitants in Canada had dropped by 4.8% between 2014 and 2018. During the same period, other countries experienced the opposite trend, with the number of researchers increasing by 4.9% in the United States, 8.9% in the U.K. and 20.6% in Germany.
Your colleague Mr. Patry, whom you probably know quite well, is a former president of the University of Ottawa and represents the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities. He, too, told us that the number of researchers in Canada had shrunk, in particular, over the past six years. Unfortunately, Canada is the only G7 country to have experienced such a decline.
Talk to us about those striking statistics. Why is Canada missing the boat?