Mr. Speaker, I do get a little frustrated when I hear people simplify what we do with science in Canada. We do not just do basic science, and we do not just do science for the sake of the economy. We actually do all of it, and we should.
I have a good example, and I want to ask the member if he would agree. When we fund scientists to do basic pure-sky, blue-sky discovery research and they discover something, what is wrong with moving that discovery out of the laboratory and into our hospitals or living rooms of the world? We have done that hundreds of times in this country.
As one example, we had a young lady take a discovery that a scientist was not actually looking for. He was looking for something else, so on he went with government money to keep doing his basic research. However, the discovery went off to a young lady in southern Ontario who developed a company around it and hired a ton of people. It was making money and saving a lot of patients with macular degeneration. That is what scientists should be doing. Knowledge that is not used is of no value. We do both in this nation. Why does this member not support our science budgets, at least once?