New competitive discriminators are a capacity to assume financial and technical risk; design system integration and project management capability; ability to significantly reduce costs over the life of the program; speed and agility in responding to new market demands; and demonstrated critical mass to absorb and accommodate the unknowns.

While we focus on normative outcome measures and evaluation, and design policies and funding streams that give us the biggest bang for the buck—by the way, I think that came from Eisenhower's Secretary of Defence, Charlie Wilson, from General Motors—we have to think clearly about two things: first, that our ability to figure out what to measure and how to measure is in its infancy; and secondly, if we get involved in that kind of disability calculus, we're likely to miss some points about the inherent value of all our children as children, not just as potential wage earners.

The objective is to reinforce European scientific and industrial leadership in industrial and service robotics, cognitive and communicative systems, advanced interfaces and smart spaces, and sentient machines, building on increases in computing and networking performance and progress in the ability to design and build systems that can learn, self-assemble, adapt and react or that optimise human-machine interactions.

There is scope for the EU and its Member States to strengthen their capacity to design viable, operational, coherent and realistic options for preventive action.

Communities and survivors will lose the ability to design projects tailored to their needs, and also lose the level of self-governance and capacity building in healing processes.

I was pleased to join with CBC employees last Friday to oppose these cuts, but it is appalling to think that if these cuts are allowed to go through, the CBC will no longer be able to design sets or make costumes, props or special effects in the Canadian epicentre of English public broadcasting.