There was a pretty significant investment starting at the end of the nineties and continuing for quite a period of time to build up Canada's research capabilities in terms of research infrastructure and research funding. You've seen the Canadian research ecosystem really evolve into something that's very well respected globally.
Institutions have built up their capabilities, and over time there's been an increase of funding in some larger programs as well, to really say if you have strengths at the institutional level, can we bring those to a world-class level where you're competing with the best in the world?
There was recently an announcement at the Canada research excellence fund about $1.3 billion or $1.4 billion, which is an example of a program that is meant to help Canadian research get to that next level globally.
You're also seeing an evolution in how institutions are working together. I think there's a recognition that even though we've invested in this strength domestically, if you're going to compete as a small country globally, you can't be a set of islands. You have to think about how you can bring your collective capabilities together to attack some of the big problems in the world and contribute to these big challenges.
There have been funding programs more recently that have tried to incentivize that collaboration across institutions. We've kind of evolved from really good research at a researcher level, to building up those capabilities in our institutions to the point where you have world-class institutions.
Can we actually get those institutions to work together effectively to be greater than the sum of their parts? The funding has tracked in that way and the way that institutions are working has evolved in that way. There's been a kind of virtuous cycle in terms of how that's happened.