Finance committee  As I heard yesterday from Ambassador Wilson, mental health issues in the workplace are the major drain on the Canadian economy and productivity. So I couldn't agree more. That is one of the main reasons why our Institute of Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction has created this large initiative on mental health in the workplace.

Finance committee  CIHR is a federal agency and I'm a federal civil servant, so I won't engage you directly on that. I would agree with my colleague, though, that Canadians expect all governments to invest wisely, but also to make key strategic investments, whether it's in defence, research, or physical infrastructure.

Finance committee  We have always had very ambitious plans. I think that is in line with international levels and what the country is capable of, and what we can return back to the country in terms of a good investment, yes.

Finance committee  My answer would be to look at what's happening internationally. I've pointed out what other countries are doing, but let me just cite one example, the American competitiveness initiative. It's an initiative of President Bush's. In it they talk about a number of things, but they primarily stress the importance of investing in science, of reinvesting in the National Science Foundation, in the NIH, in graduate student training.

Finance committee  That's a very good question. It's a complicated area, as you know, Mr. McCallum.

Finance committee  Okay. I'll talk about what CIHR is doing in this area, to illustrate a point. We have thought hard about what the challenges are to commercialization and what our role as a federal agency is in that area, and we started a number of programs designed to deal with huge gaps in the commercialization pipeline.

Finance committee  Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. During my five minutes I would like to leave you with two key messages. First, if Canada is to build a globally competitive, productive economy, we need to build new partnerships: partnerships between government and the private sector, partnerships between academia and industry, and new partnerships between researchers and Canadians.