Industry committee  I'll give you a concrete example. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory borrowed $300 million worth of heavy water for use in its facility. We have met all of our scientific objectives and, as of last year, we returned that money. We now have a facility that has significant capabiliti

Industry committee  I also accept that responsibility. We accept that responsibility. We are working with Science North, which not only develops things for Sudbury, but also develops theatres that can be sold around the world. Those are examples of things it has done. It does IMAX movies. It has t

Industry committee  I would say that we're very willing to do that and we'll come back to you with some more specifics. The broad-based things that we can say today are, number one, that it is broadly acknowledged that the operational costs for large capital facilities, as was said by Mr. Taylor e

Industry committee  I just spent a fascinating hour listening to Ray Laflamme as he received a top prize from the Canadian Association of Physicists at their conference in Quebec City earlier this week. So I understand exactly what you mean about this particular individual. I think the sort of thi

Industry committee  Let me give you another example of why it is necessary to have basic science in order to make progress in technological areas. Simply take computers. For 30 years we have been dealing with what's called Moore's law; that is, the capability of a computer doubles every 18 months,

Industry committee  If I could make a comment, we would love to have you come two kilometres underground into a laboratory that is as clean as, or cleaner than, a hospital operating theatre, in an active mine where Vale Inco is taking thousands of tonnes of ore per day, and we're coexisting with the

Industry committee  If I could add to that, I agree with everything Martin said. I think it's important to recognize that these larger-scale projects, which will only be a small fraction of the total, can have significant impact and therefore should be a part of our overall set of things that we'r

Industry committee  The answer to the question is the same, which is that with the ability to have a secure source of ongoing operating, that is the sort of level that we would wish to spend on such things. We have a history, starting with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which was a single exper

Industry committee  Well, we certainly worry about such things. Who would not? You are attempting to establish a world-class facility in a situation of great uncertainty, where you're attempting to make promises to international groups who are wanting to come and perform experiments at your facilit

Industry committee  In our case, we have six years of projected support from the Province of Ontario, combined with contributions from the universities over that period of time. We are in the same situation as NEPTUNE with respect to having two years of commitment from CFI and NSERC for matching, bu

Industry committee  As we said earlier, Canada is the envy of other countries in terms of its ability to move forward in research and development as a result of the programs that have been put in place in recent years. And we recognize, of course, that the percentage of GDP being expended by private

Industry committee  I think critical mass in our area is being met very well by a combination of things. The Perimeter Institute is one example. That's the theoretical side of the experiment that we're doing. Also, the CIFAR program in cosmology and gravity is doing similar things. The Canadian Inst

Industry committee  We think we punch above our weight in a number of these areas when, for instance, you get, in our case, one of the top two scientific discoveries in the world and, for six months of 2003, the most citations by other scientists in the whole field of physics for our results. That's

Industry committee  Perhaps I could add one further thing. Canada is actually, in general, the envy of other countries in terms of the way in which it is able to do research and development. Things such as CFI, the Canada research chairs, and the indirect funding and so on that have been put in plac

Industry committee  I would like to expand on that. We have had a tremendous advantage from the outset in being close partners with Science North, the science centre in Sudbury, and we have had exhibits there from the very beginning. They have 300,000 people a year going through there. We have clas