Mr. Speaker, I am also pleased to rise following the announcement made today by the Minister of Industry.
Allow me to begin by making a short comment on procedure. When a ministerial statement is made in the House, it is customary that the statements made afterwards by opposition members take about the same amount of time as the minister's statement, or that they do not exceed it. It is also customary, out of courtesy, for ministers who are going to make a statement to give an advance copy of their speeches to opposition parties, and this was done earlier this morning.
However, I was stunned to receive from the minister, right in the middle of oral question period, a new text which had been inflated, if I may use that expression, in the sense that it was much more detailed. Unfortunately for you, Mr. Speaker, and for the members of this House, this means that I will probably not take as much time as the minister did when he made his speech.
As we know, human knowledge is at the core of what is now called the new economy. Indeed, this new economy is primarily based on the production, use and communication of human knowledge. The grey matter is becoming the single most important factor of a nation's economic development.
This new economic situation, to which Quebec, Canada and all the countries of the world are confronted, requires a number of adjustments to the role of the state, in order to allow our respective economies to keep pace with the changes and to remain competitive.
Consequently, Quebec, Canada and all the other nations of the world must work to successfully enter the era of this new knowledge-based economy. Therefore, we cannot oppose any initiative that seeks to promote the development of human knowledge.
Nor are we opposed, and far from it, to letting the federal government use this noble objective to pay tribute to the refined intellectual that former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was.
The rather laudatory comments of the minister reflect the deep attachment that many Canadians, particularly among the members of the federal Liberal Party, still have to Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
While we certainly applaud the principles on which today's government initiative is based, we nonetheless question the appropriateness of such an announcement at this time.
The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology is currently studying the whole peer evaluation system in the process of granting research grants and scholarships. It would have been proper, or at least prudent, for the minister to await the recommendations of the committee before launching this new initiative with such unbridled enthusiasm.
Moreover, we also question the vehicle chosen by the government to channel the amount of money that it plans on allocating for higher education merit scholarships in the humanities and social sciences. It would appear as though the choice to establish the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, a private foundation that does not report to parliamentarians, is based more on sentimental considerations than on requirements for efficiency or transparency.
Why has the government chosen to transfer the envelope allocated for this purpose to a private foundation instead of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, for example, which could very well have accomplished this mission that comes under its mandate?
The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology's study, to which I made reference earlier, has shown that 55% of researchers and graduates work in the humanities and social sciences, whereas less than 13% of federal research grants are in awarded this sector. So we agree that something must be done, but as I mentioned, this may not be the most appropriate vehicle.
How will this foundation be held truly accountable for managing the considerable sums of public money—after all, we are talking about $125 million, which is no modest sum?
We are also concerned about the tangent that this government seems to be taking with this initiative, which will no longer assess candidates based on the excellence of their work and proposed projects, but based on themes decided by someone who has not been specified.
Indeed, the minister stated, a few minutes ago, that “the Foundation's board of directors, in consultation with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canadian universities and other partners”—without specifying who—“will choose the specific themes of study”.
To finish, we hope that the quality of those who will make up the board of this foundation, some of whom, incidentally, are no strangers to the Liberal government, far from it in fact, will be able to allay the concerns we have about the public interest, scientific research and about researchers themselves.