Mr. Speaker, as my colleague previously said, I appreciate the Liberals bringing forward this motion. It is a critical matter facing our country.
Regrettably, the previous member who spoke mentioned a good friend of mine, Dr. David Schindler, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta in the Killam Memorial Chair. Dr. Schindler at one time worked for the Government of Canada and he too left because of the repression of scientific information. He stated in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen in March 2010 that, “Such muzzling occurred under Conservative and Liberal administrations...as far back as the Mulroney government.” I guess we remain hopeful that future Liberal regimes would reverse the policies they previously had where apparently they also limited science information being released by government scientists.
I have a question for my colleague, and I admire her as a scientist. One matter that neither she nor her colleague mentioned is an important issue for Canadian scientists, and that is the fact that now, in order to get a federal NSERC grant, or even a Western Economic Diversification grant, an individual has to partner with one of the industry sectors in favour with the government. I wonder if she could speak to that.