Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to start off by thanking all the witnesses who are here today from the three councils.
You have been here before and I'm sure you will be here again. I agree with my colleague Mr. Lobb that the talent, expertise and education you all have, I have no doubt, far outweigh that of most MPs. I'll say “most”, because I don't know all the MPs, or government or anything. Thank you so much for being here and giving us your time, experience and knowledge to delve into this particular topic that obviously hasn't been looked at in this way in the last 20 years. I'm glad we're here.
I'm going to start off with two questions. Mr. Hewitt, I'll start with you, because you brought them out, but in whatever time I have remaining, I would like to have all three of you, if possible, deal with them. If you can't now, perhaps submit it in writing.
I'm going to say the two questions, then I'm going to leave it open for you to talk about them.
Last week, we heard from other witnesses about raising the value of awards versus the number of awards. We're calling them students, but some of these people are not students. These are post-doctoral geniuses, as far as I'm concerned. That's one question I have: What do we do? Quite frankly, who decides these things? It can't be government, I don't think. Who decides and how do we deal with that? I'll start with that.
The second one, and if we don't have time, I'd like to get something in writing, was alluded to a few times. What is the balance—I imagine each of the three councils is different—between federal, provincial and private sources of funding? How do we deal with that? How do we assess it? What kind of balance...? Surely it's not just the federal government that is responsible here.
Dr. Hewitt, please go ahead.