Here's one area for improvement, and this was brought out from the universities. One of the considerations we can look at in Growing Forward 2 is using the current programming. You actually have to spend the money before you can apply to have some of it refunded. So if you have a $500,000 research grant, you may have to spend the money before you can submit a claim. So there's a question of cashflow. We need to be considering ways to have some of the research money advanced at the beginning of a project, so that industry is not looking at ways to generate cashflow. There are advances on some of the programs, but some of them were a little difficult to administer.
Perhaps it would help to see if there are ways to advance some of this money up front. I realize there's a risk that government takes if money is not expended in the way it was supposed to be, but I think we have to balance that off against the ability to actually conduct those research programs.
One of the things that has been working well is the collaboration we're starting to see between government agencies such as Health Canada and Ag Canada. They are starting to take a look at what we can do to further some of our work in ag products and health outcomes, and there's certainly a lot more that could be done there.
In our view, we need more alignment between the regulations and the research. To get novel product approval—and we'll use pea fibre or pea starch as an example—we have to have regulatory approval, because they're considered novel products in Canada. When we go to the U.S., we have to go through FDA to get GRAS status.
As to areas of collaboration, which may be through the RCC, they're basically trying to reduce some of the duplication of effort and increase mutual recognition, so that we don't have to repeat everything. I am all for focusing on human health protection and environmental protection, but we need to get rid of some of the overlap, doing the same work twice. We need to stop reviewing work that has already been reviewed by other scientists. It's duplication that's not adding value. I think we can pay more attention to issues such as health protection by focusing on the right things and not duplicating things that add no value.