Thank you.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for inviting us to appear, and we will be brief. We have submitted quite a thorough document to you, which will contain the detail of our presentation.
I am the chief executive officer of Own the Podium. Alex is the chief technical officer. We have been the leaders of the program over the last four or five years to prepare our athletes, both for the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver and the summer games in Beijing and London.
The Own the Podium program, as I think you know, is a very special initiative of the Government of Canada, the Vancouver Organizing Committee, the Olympic Committee and Paralympic Committee, and all the winter sports to try to upgrade the quality of our team performance at the Vancouver Games in 2010. It was determined that if we did not do that, the games would not be a success. They wouldn't capture the interest and the pride of all Canadians, and therefore we should do something about it.
So a consortium was formed with those partners I mentioned. We have had funding for five years, up to March 2010. Our dilemma is that following March 2010, 40% of our funding disappears as a result of the organizing committee ceasing operations and all their corporate and provincial government contracts ceasing at that time. So we're here today to express our interest and ask for your support to provide $22 million a year of base funding for the winter sport program so that we might continue the great success we've had to date. The success is very clear. Yesterday in the Toronto Globe and Mail the front page said Canadian athletes will win the total number of medals at the Olympic Games, as expressed by international media.
It's true. We have come from 4th, 5th, and 6th position six years ago to number one position in the world. We had 17 Olympic medals two games ago. We will have somewhere around 29 to 32 or 33 Olympic medals, more than Germany, more than Russia, more than the United States. Other than bragging about that, because that has been the result of our national sport federations responding to the initiatives, the important thing for Alex and me has been the fact that we have begun to revolutionize how we deliver sport in this country, in partnerships with corporations, with provinces, with the federal government, and with the general public, and we do want to keep that momentum going.
Our team will be enormously successful. We have made great progress, but if we don't have continuing funding, what happened when we held the games in Montreal, what happened when we held the games in Calgary, will happen again. Our funding will stop and all our momentum and achievements will disappear, or at least a great majority of them. We will not be able to fund the 16 winter sports we're currently funding. We'll probably have to cut our program to about half that number. We won't be able to continue the science and innovation and technology programs that have given Canadian athletes the best skis, the best bobsleighs, the best suits, the best sports psychology, the best sports medicine support that you would find in any country in the world. We will not be able to access a number of the expensive facilities we have to access for the winter sports to keep our programs going.
So we're here today to request your support. The Government of Canada has been the leading partner of this Own the Podium initiative. Obviously, we wish you to continue to assist us in this endeavour, and we will be very grateful for your support.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.