Finance committee  I don't dispute anything you've said; it's absolutely correct. As I said earlier, the kind of funding we're talking about needs to come for the projects and the heavy lifting. But the role for existing federal entities is to help with this interaction, convening and bringing groups together.

Finance committee  I think when you're in a single province there's a different construct than when you're trying to bridge provinces.

Finance committee  Largely because there is a lot of interaction amongst the genome centres in western Canada—Genome Prairie, Genome Alberta, and Genome B.C. We see a lot of the linkages that each of us wants to build with industry and so on to deal with moving stuff from the lab to commercialization as requiring the convening facility that programs like western economic diversification allow.

Finance committee  Some of us are just more creative and imaginative.

Finance committee  If you have an opportunity to read this...but I'll give you one example. As you know, for such things as mad cow disease, working out the genetic composition of normal beef cattle and cows and so on is a tremendous advance in allowing us to make rapid diagnosis of the presence of mad cow disease, rather than having to wait months while it goes through laboratories working on brain samples and so on.

Finance committee  Exactly. For example, we now have two projects that are working on using genetically modified bacteria to clean up oil spills in the environment. We have projects using bacterial populations and other micro-organisms in the process of being able to release oil supplies that are trapped in inaccessible locations.

Finance committee  First, to clarify, we didn't put any dollar figures on it, not because we don't think the funding is important, but to make sure that it's organized and directed in the right strategic ways in order to solve the problems. Of course, we recognize the financial pressures the country is under and that we have to pay attention to what we can do with what we have, and we talk about removing barriers and creating incentives and so on.

Finance committee  By the way, I know you're starved for reading material, so we have the annual report of Genome Prairie. We've put it all in colour for you.

Finance committee  Thank you very much. I'm here representing Genome Prairie, which coordinates and oversees research and development projects that are led by researchers and developers based here in Manitoba and in Saskatchewan, but also includes collaborators throughout Canada and in several other countries.