Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses for spending their time with us this Wednesday evening to discuss federal funding criteria and research excellence in Canada.
My first question is for Dr. Zhu.
You have been vocal about the way academia is driving away potential Nobel Prize winners. However, in Canada, we recently celebrated Dr. Geoffrey Hinton's landmark achievement in winning the Nobel Prize in physics, which was a strong testament to Canadian excellence and the merits of Canadian funding agencies. In fact, our government is investing $734 million to support Canada's world-leading research infrastructure and institutes and to help the next generation of researchers discover new scientific breakthroughs.
Could you speak more to why it's important to fund researchers, even if the research seems far-fetched and maybe even odd to those outside the research community?