I have been concerned that it should move faster, but I know that within the government and across the government, officials were trying to understand exactly what was going on and then what levers they had available to affect it.
One of the concerns, of course, is that at the federal level, federal funding for R and D is the lever, so how would they go about that?
It has been a step-by-step process. They started with briefings of administrators and then developed guidelines, very user-friendly guidelines. I was impressed by them. Now they have gone all the way to national security screenings for proposals that come before the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. Two-thirds of those have already been sent back and been told that, no, that's a risk for national security. That's alarming, because it means that for all those previous years there was a high proportion of proposals that were a risk for national security.
I'm really pleased that the government is now moving ahead and looking at what else it can do. I'm very much looking forward to this committee's report, because I think it will add to the body of work on what more can be done.