Thank you very much, through the chair.
The university system has this great program called the research support fund. It helps universities fund their research offices and endeavours. Generally for every dollar they get from the tri-council, they get 40 cents on top, free, without applying much of a proposal, to run their research office, commercialization office, technology transfer office and these types of things.
Colleges do not get that. We don't have it. For some grants we can take up to 20% of the grant envelope and put it towards these types of expenses, but a lot of them are just project costs, grants that pay only project costs. I've got to run projects and I have no support to run the office of those who get the projects, take the company through the process and help commercialize the thing after the project is realized. That's what I mean.
That's what I meant a few years ago in that op-ed. We run on steam here—on the change in the sofa. Colleges are funded by the province to deliver student graduates to society. The research endeavour has to be a little bit more self-sustaining. It's hard for a college administration to say, I'm going to put x amount of money in the research office so they can do their great other stuff. We need better funding like the research support fund to support our offices. Like I mentioned, we write the grants, do the industry partner thing and hire the students. All of that's done by the professors at universities, not at colleges.