Science and Research committee  This is also why I started a new network at Waterloo called TRuST, Trust in Research Undertaken in Science and Technology. I think if our public better understood the important role of science, our government would also be out there more and championing it as well. First we have to champion the “worthwhileness” of it—which is probably not a good word—and once we get that going, then we need to have this advisory group, ranging from industry to the most basic sciences, to figure out how to group us together in ways that make us work well together—but we need more money.

Science and Research committee  We've actually had this problem for many decades, so it's not just this government. We need to appreciate what science does, and this is why I said it's a long-term thing. It's not just the one government. It's that we do have to get out there and understand the importance of science, and we would really appreciate it if....

Science and Research committee  Those two are already among the world's leaders. We spend more per capita on quantum than any other country does, so let's keep that going and let's not lose it. I think in AI we're getting to be stars. We have to look to the future. What will be the next one? Luckily, for us, we had a billionaire who wanted to start quantum.

Science and Research committee  That's right. He's the one who did the lipid nanoparticles—which is how the vaccine gets into us—not the vaccine itself, and yet he couldn't get the funds to start the company to do it and have his own vaccine company or be part of a vaccine company. This is why we were sort of stuck waiting, but Pfizer took his technology and ran with it, so the Germans got it and we waited for it.

Science and Research committee  I think what's so sad for us is that when I was a graduate student and I got my NSERC scholarship in 1981, it was $11,000. That was more than an American made. I could get an apartment for $250 a month and I was getting paid almost $1,000 a month. Look at that and look at what we ask our students to live on now.

Science and Research committee  I think it also takes a will. It takes the right mindset to go out.... Don't forget that Waterloo started as an engineering school, so it's a totally different thing. We had the mindset right from the get-go. We had the mindset to be a co-op institution right from the get-go. Of course, then we are always looking for where our students can go, and that should be bringing the industries back to us to help that way.

Science and Research committee  There are a few ways to go with that. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but anyway, I met somebody from high up in Apple, and they said, “We take more students from you than anywhere.” Well, if that's the case, they should be coming back to fund us. It has to go back and forth and all around.

Science and Research committee  What I would like to see is a better way for industry.... I don't know about the polytech universities, but they may be doing short-term research. It's very hard. For a while, to get a research grant we had to have an industry partner. I thought, “Are we now supposed to go around begging for this money, not knowing where to go?

Science and Research committee  Well, I know that a lot of the small high-tech companies wish that we had a small business loan like they do at SBIR, as it's called, in the United States. That could help so many. They get grants to get off the ground, but then there are also grants to make sure that they get through that valley of death until they become a larger company.

Science and Research committee  Where I have a cottage—

Science and Research committee  What exact issue?

Science and Research committee  All I know is that underfunding is an issue in Canada: It's small and big. There's nobody that's overly funded when it comes to science. The Canadian scale is way low compared to that of all of our competitors, and not even all of our competitors. Of 32 OECD countries, we're racing to the bottom.

Science and Research committee  That's right. As I said, we're already an egalitarian system. I think the Bouchard report made the point that you can't just look at the big initiatives. We do need big initiatives. We should be looking at the next pandemic. We have to figure out what the big strategic goals are, but we don't ever know, right?

Science and Research committee  I don't have an answer for that. If you're talking about tri-council money or the other funders, to me it's an issue of not having enough money to go around.

Science and Research committee  I would like it to be leading researchers, but again from our government labs, from our industry and from academia. As I say, the countries that do it best are the ones that have figured out how to have all three work together and be instructive. The equivalent would be NRC in the United States, and also these joint things at universities.