Thank you for the question.
I am very proud to have helped draft the report, which is important for science and technology in Canada. Various recommendations were made in it.
In particular, I'm thinking of the creation of a federal position that is roughly equivalent to my position in Quebec. Mona Nemer is currently the chief science advisor of Canada. She is a great colleague, and I work with her a lot.
Furthermore, we recommended that there be more co‑operation between the three federal research councils and that research programs result in the creation of widely varied multidisciplinary teams, with researchers in health, engineering, mathematics, social sciences and the humanities. In that respect, we have made great progress.
We have also made a lot of progress on the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion.
Where we still have significant challenges to overcome, as I mentioned in my opening statement, is support for basic research in Canada. We are lagging by percentage points compared with other countries in the world, such as the United States, France and Germany, but I also mentioned smaller countries like Finland. There is work to be done on this issue.
Progress also needs to be made on the Canadian funding ecosystem for research and innovation. Even I find this ecosystem complicated, and I have been immersed in the field every day for 40 years now in Quebec and Canada. I often liken it to a jigsaw puzzle. I'm not talking about something easy; it's a real jigsaw puzzle. It is sometimes difficult to understand how things work. It's like a new jigsaw puzzle that you receive as a gift: when you open the box, you think that there are far too many pieces, but when you start working on it, you realize that some pieces are missing. In Canada, we have added a lot of pieces, but the work is often done in silos.
I think that it's time for a new follow‑up to the Naylor report. A small group of experts could determine what we really need, what is missing, and which pieces don't fit together well in the Canadian research and innovation ecosystem. That type of committee could issue short‑term recommendations and then become permanent and oversee how Canada compares with the rest of the world on science and technology. That's something that is still missing today.