Mr. Speaker, I know the University of Lethbridge does excellent work. We should mention as well that it is not just universities but all post-secondary institutions. Institutions like NAIT and SAIT in Alberta do excellent work as well.
In terms of combining the private sector with university research, I think a good format is at the University of Saskatchewan. The University of Saskatchewan has set up something called Innovation Place where it has all the researchers working but it also has people from companies who can come in, assist and work side by side. Researchers can approach them for venture capital. That gets people working from the early stages of the project.
In terms of protecting intellectual property and commercializing research, the University of Alberta is probably in the top five in the country in doing that. It needs to be done in a multi-layered way. If we look at the National Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Alberta, it needs funding from different sources. It needs it from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, which funds mainly capital projects; and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, which funds a lot of the salaries.
At that level, even if it had something like Innovation Place, which the University of Saskatchewan has, then it would get the private sector funding right at the beginning. The people from the various companies or the small business people could see what researchers were doing and then could get involved in that research at the very early levels.