Mr. Speaker, I think the member is missing the point in terms of what stable and predictable funding looks like.
Stable and predictable funding means that there is a trajectory and that the granting councils can actually grant money to new applications. At the moment, research takes, three, five or seven years and the dollars need to be committed over a period of time. We want the young researchers in this country to feel that they have a chance at this and that they do not need to move south of the border because they as yet do not have a track record.
Jim Turk from CAUT is very worried that well below 20% of the grant applications for academic research are being funded at this time. This is demoralizing in terms of how much work it takes to put together a terrific application and then have it turned own, even though it has been rated in one of the highest ratings possible. Most of our Canadian researchers are having their proposals ranked very high but still get turned down, which is totally demoralizing. That is what happens in order for the research to end up somewhere else.
David Colman, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute, was quoted this weekend in The Ottawa Citizen as saying:
“We have great advantage here, but not much money”, he says. "What is needed in Canada is not to build more buildings, but to fill those buildings with the smartest people in the world and allow them to work. This is a great country and it can do this with little effort. It just needs a little push”.