This is also why I started a new network at Waterloo called TRuST, Trust in Research Undertaken in Science and Technology. I think if our public better understood the important role of science, our government would also be out there more and championing it as well.
First we have to champion the “worthwhileness” of it—which is probably not a good word—and once we get that going, then we need to have this advisory group, ranging from industry to the most basic sciences, to figure out how to group us together in ways that make us work well together—but we need more money.