Thank you for your question. I didn't catch the last bit of your question, but I think I got the gist of it.
Canada is a very lucky country, in that we have world-leading researchers. Nobody's disputing that. We, frankly, punch above our weight. We have lots of talent. As I said, I'm a supporter of the federal government in spending money on research. Not everybody is. I think it's a good thing, broadly speaking. I think we can probably afford it as a country.
The truth of the matter is that, especially for things like natural sciences, it can be very hard for research councils to identify promising research. Research funding is inherently unpredictable. You give money to people, thinking that they show promise. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It's hit and miss. The problem with research councils being a bit too narrow-minded is that they think, “This is the next big thing. I'm going to give them lots of money”, but sometimes the next big thing is not the next big thing; it doesn't work out, or it's actually not a big thing. That is one of the arguments in favour of being more open-minded and more diverse in terms of what we fund, because you never know what's going to be a world-changing project and what's going to be a bust.
There was a case last year of somebody in the U.S. who won a Nobel Prize in medicine. For decades, she had no job in academia because everybody said that her research didn't matter. She had no money and she worked on her own until she got the Nobel Prize for helping to develop the COVID vaccine. That is an example of what happens very often in research: Promising ideas don't get funded because funders—the bureaucrats who make these funding decisions—have tunnel vision. They chase the next big thing, but sometimes it doesn't work out.