Mr. Speaker, I would emphasize that the question was not about the overall level of research spending. I know the parliamentary secretary wants to talk about the levels of spending. It is not about the overall level of spending. It is surprising to hear a Conservative member answer a question about how to spend money by saying that we are spending lots of money.
If we look at the number of discovery grants at NSERC, it has been going down in the last five years. In the aftermath of the budget in the spring, the research tools and instrumentation program was cut at NSERC. The major resource support program was frozen. There are a lot of complaints from labs across the country. Because their research will be cut, they will need to cut the number of users of certain major infrastructure facilities in Canada. If one talks to people working in basic research, the message is that their funding is being cut and this will impact the long-term innovation in Canada's economy.