Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question and concern. We are going to proceed in two fashions. On one hand it is important to consult Canadians from coast to coast. On the other hand it is important to listen to people like the Auditor General and to take a look at how the federal government works and spends at the moment.
We have a global science and technology expenditure in the federal government at the moment of about $6 billion which when including tax expenditures reaches a total of about $7 billion. It is important even as we proceed to look at how we can develop an innovative economy, how we can use the principles of leverage, and how we can look at outcomes of government programs. It is also important to review how we are making our current expenditures to make sure they are up to date and are the most effective they can be.
Even though we have committed very substantially in the budget to research and to new dollars for research, for innovation, for a Canadian technology network, for a Canadian investment fund, for dollars to put together an engineers' program and a variety of other contributions and initiatives, we intend to review how we are currently spending those dollars that go toward science and technology across the broad framework of departments.
It is not necessarily an easy task. It will need a lot of co-operation among departments, but we think it is important to do so because it is very important to spend wisely even as we move forward on important initiatives to promote innovation and research.