Mr. Speaker, we have just been treated to another insight into the kind of distorted mirror of economics on which the NDP seems to pride itself.
The $9 billion that has been spent by this government on research and development are real dollars. That is the way the government spends money. We spend a dollar; we count it as a dollar spent on research and development. We do not go back to some measure of 1981 dollars or 2001 dollars and then reduce everything to that earlier value of our currency. That is a futile exercise that economists have every right to engage in, but that is not part of the bookkeeping of the Government of Canada.
It disturbs us to hear, yet again, a certain level of economic illiteracy from our NDP colleagues when they try to deny the reality of what this government's spending has been. It has been taxpayers' money that has gone into research and development. We are proud of that record, whether it is to go to centres of excellence or fundamental physics or, yes indeed, to support accelerators that are taking discoveries from the laboratory into the marketplace.
This is the other area where scientists and other Canadians are unsure of their ground with the NDP because, however great its rhetoric may be on these subjects, it is not prepared to commit categorically to the market economy as a building block, a fundamental principle of Canada's economy. The NDP is not prepared, as we saw at its convention, to admit that the profit principle is what guides private sector activity in this country. That has been in the NDP preamble up until now. Attempts to paper that over with something else are not working.
We are proud of the NRC and other departments. We are proud of the discoveries and innovation we have supported. We are proud of the fact that Canada is now ranked the top advanced economy in the world for state spending on fundamental research and development.
Let me list a few recent successes.
Last fall, the National Research Council of Canada flew the world's first civilian jet powered by 100% biofuel.
Last year, Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, TRIUMF, played a significant role in the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle.
More recently, as we have all seen, Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to take command of the International Space Station.
Those $9 billion are at work. Tom Jenkins has led an expert panel to review federal support to R and D, to improve contributions. This panel recommended a new approach to supporting innovation, which we are adopting. That brought $121 million more to invest in the strategic focus of the NRC, in just this budget, economic action plan 2013.
We are all proud of that institution. It has been here since 1916. It has brought incredible discoveries to the world—the discovery of the pacemaker and computer animation technology—and those discoveries have helped create jobs.
The NRC is now working with other players in Canada's innovation system, including academia and the public and private sectors, to adapt to business research needs by concentrating on active, business-driven, industry-relevant research.
This is something that other jurisdictions are doing, that Canada knows it needs to do, that Canadian scientists want to do because they want their discoveries to be relevant to the marketplace and, obviously, that our peers and those whose private sectors spend more on research and development around the world have been doing for some time. It is the right thing to do. This increased spending, this strong support for research and development in this country will continue under this government.