Certainly, there are great impacts for industry, Canadian knowledge and scientific excellence. There's quite a bit of discussion by social scientists about the importance of scientific research. Internationally respected research in science and engineering is flourishing in Canada. My colleagues at the University of Waterloo are doing some of the top research in those areas. They are also well supported by NSERC funds in engineering and in other physical sciences.
With regard to making certain that we are supporting a wide range of highly qualified personnel, what we use for our graduate students, etc., we want to make certain that personnel reflect those who have been traditionally under-represented. There is a real challenge with having a very low proportion of women in engineering. We are trying to get 30% of women engineers by 2030. We're not going to achieve that, but that's kind of a low target. There are massive things in society that are affected by not having gender parity and other things in that workforce. That critical workforce is building almost everything that we use in our society, including tech devices.
It is really important that we have these broad viewpoints with everybody in society contributing. It is important to have those elements, particularly in areas where there are women, racialized minorities and indigenous people who can see that this could be an opportunity for them. There have been marked changes by people taking some actions to change those directions and to encourage more people in those areas. In that range of things that NSERC is doing, I think it's working quite well.