Thank you very much for inviting me to address the committee.

I'm here as a citizen and also as somebody deeply embedded in academia. I've taught at four North American universities. My parents, my grandfather, my uncle and two cousins were all professors. Despite that, I'm here to say that in considering the criteria for funding advanced research, what you need to do is get rid of the criteria and the funding. It's not the business of the federal government.

I say that for two reasons. The first of those is that as members of Parliament, you have critical responsibilities to the citizens. We elect you. You're the only part of the entire state apparatus on which we have input. Most of your core responsibilities are in a horrendous mess, and you need to get back to them. The amount you're spending on post-secondary education is making the mess there worse, so this is win-win: It's a provincial responsibility.

I believe that the members of the Bloc Québécois will agree on that point.

Somehow, however, the feds are spending roughly $15 billion on it. This is at a time when the nation is over a trillion dollars in debt. You need to get back to things like balancing the budget.

Let me draw on some very recent news stories. First, we just got this bizarre Christmas tax break. It will save us each $4.51 and cost business millions to administer. You guys need to be fixing the tax code, not genetic codes.

Then there's defending the realm. This nation is defenceless, not just in the Arctic but everywhere. Our military is in ruins. You shouldn't be thinking about antimatter; you should be thinking about ammunition and getting us someone to fire it.

Then there's infrastructure. I just saw a story that Via Rail is consuming subsidies of $1,000 a passenger and can't make the trains run on time. I was in an airport. We just hailed International Civil Aviation Day. Our airports have lousy Wi-Fi and no plugs.

In another story, the government just promised drinking water on aboriginal reserves. Well, that's a core responsibility—tap water, not heavy water.

Then there's the Federal Court. They have to curtail hearings because they haven't got staff and they haven't got funding. Justice is as core a duty of government as you could find, other than national defence.

This is the kind of thing the 338 members of Parliament need to be on full time. You shouldn't be chasing laser beams. It's not even in your jurisdiction. You don't have time for it.

I don't really think—