I always go back to the one I brought up a few times on this committee, which is research dollars that were given to study Dolly Parton's lyrics. I'm sure that there are other ones like that out there—maybe not Dolly Parton's lyrics, but ones that everyday Canadians would wonder why the heck the government is spending money on that.
The question I would have for Ms. Aiken at Dalhousie University is the one that I think probably the smaller and mid-sized universities get frustrated with. It's the fact that they're kind of led to believe, or it's put on them, that they don't have the basis, the staff or have the infrastructure to do the research projects and to “play with the big guys”.
I always go back to the University of Guelph. I just can't believe there's another university in Canada that does as much top-quality agricultural research as the University of Guelph, yet it's not in the U15 gang.
What do we do to level this playing field?
It doesn't seem right that Guelph would not be considered as one of the top research universities or at least be eligible for doing important ag research.