Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to start by acknowledging your steadfast support for science and research over the last number of years. The leadership role you have played is greatly appreciated by the research community, I know.
I also want to thank all the members present for their public service.
Thank you for giving up yet another evening to the cause of your work. I feel privileged to be here with you. I hope to contribute usefully.
One of the points I'd like to make off the top, highlighted as well by my colleagues who are presidents of the granting agencies, is that science and research, where we focus on discoveries and downstream patents and the use of the ideas in civil society, is ultimately about people. It's about the next generation of talent and equipping subsequent generations of Canadians to lead and to make a difference in our country and in the world. What they get from advanced training in research, the discipline of science and scholarship, is a way of dealing with the world and understanding and shaping the world. It makes a massive difference to how this country unfolds in the decades ahead. It's an investment in the future.
It's also an investment in excellence and equity. It's not a cost centre. It bears enormous fruit, not just in terms of, if we think about it, commercialization or application, but because those individuals who are shaped by their participation in the research enterprise, whether they stay in the academy or move elsewhere into a whole variety of roles, make a huge difference to this country. The blend of competition and collaboration that characterizes cutting-edge research is I think so important, and in some ways very Canadian—that confluence of goals, of working together in common cause, but also seeking to excel, which I think is very important.
There is a great deal more I could say about where we are in terms of our funding situation. The competition is simply intense in ways that it's never been. I simply want to wrap up by sharing some benchmarks.
We have the huge COMPETES act happening in the great United States of America to our south. Germany is another peer nation. It's had 3% annual increases in research funding for a decade, and has now started a second decade of similar increases. That's 20 years at 3%, compounding at 60%, a roughly 80% increase over that period. Obviously, the U.K. has also been investing and has provided excellent coordination to an oversight mechanism that looks more like Quebec's current granting council mechanism.
So everyone is in this game. Canada has done extremely well. We've had great leadership in so many ways, but the bar has been raised. I think we have to meet it, and ideally surpass it, in the years ahead.
That's all, Madam Chair. Thank you for your time.