Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very insightful question. This is something we looked into together at the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, where he had the opportunity to serve a few times. He also looked into this when he was the science and technology critic.
My colleague is absolutely right. There has to be a chain. You have to go from the top down. Applied research is downstream, but there needs to be a well, a reserve. This well is drying up because the current government has no interest in science and is not particularly interested in basing its policies on science or solid evidence. We all know about the cuts at Statistics Canada. This data is key to ensuring we have an economic portrait of Canada for our discussions on the economy and the budget. This information is missing and data collection has stopped since the famous long-form census was cancelled. That worries me, and it should worry my Conservative colleagues because not having this economic portrait is very harmful to Canada's economic future.