Industry committee  It is not yet open but the tent is there. What I would like to do is to open a museum in the Saint-Hubert region. We would show our work there in the medical field since we do lots of work on the cardiovascular, neurological and immune systems. We do very impressive things in those fields.

Industry committee  The relationship with NASA is about 70% of our budget. The relationship with ESA is about 30%. As well, although it's a small percentage, we have some very interesting projects with Japan. We don't have acess to space. Right now we rely on Russia and the United States to get us into space.

Industry committee  Yes, we are. In fact, our industry is talking with Turkey. You mentioned Turkey. They are an emerging nation, and they're planning on spending some money on Earth observation satellites. Our industry is talking to them, as they are with Brazil and even Dubai. Dubai is quite interested in getting observation capability up there.

Industry committee  If we're not able to reprofile, that is true.

Industry committee  Yes, and I think you'll see that in five years it will be around $280 million.

Industry committee  Right. I can give you the data; giving you my opinion is where it gets a little dangerous for me, but here are the data, and this is just CSA's budget. In 1997, our budget was $496 million. When we were promulgated as an agency we were given a budget of $300 million. I was sitting in the back row in those days, and the concept was that the Canadian Space Agency would be given a budget of about $300 million and then a series of major crown projects that would add up to $600 million or $700 million.

Industry committee  The reason it was $390 million, though, was because of reprofiling. One of the issues that an agency has--all space agencies in the world--is that we're working on international projects, so if we have a big project that is $1 billion, as we had with space station, and it delays one year, we have to reprofile a substantial amount of money into the next year.

Industry committee  I'm trying to remember the number, but I think 3,800 asteroids are catalogued between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some of them are one-third to one-half the size of our moon; others go all the way down to something the size of a football field in elliptical diameter. Every day they are finding more of these asteroids.

Industry committee  Yes, there's one--in fact, the one they're going to go to, which I feel is coincidence. It is Apophis. It has a keyhole that will be between the Earth and the moon in 2036. Don't quote me on the year. As it comes around, if it hits that keyhole....The keyhole is an area in space defined by the orbit it takes to hit it on the next cycle.

Industry committee  Bob, I'll let you go, but I'll start. The stomach shuts down when you first get to orbit. All your systems shut down a little bit, so the HCl that's secreting out of the inner lining of your stomach to digest your food doesn't quite work the way it did before you left. Because of that, the best thing to take when you first get up there--not everybody agrees with this, and it's somewhat anecdotal--is shrimp cocktail with as much horseradish as you can take.

Industry committee  When I came on board, I was mandated to come up with a plan with respect to where this country should go with respect to space. We are in a tough fiscal environment right now. In Budget 2009 we received $110 million. The purpose of that money is to bridge the gap between the exploration we have done since 1986, when our robotics developments were mandated by the Government of Canada, and when we calculated the next major decision would be made about exploration. so that $110 million was for robotics.

Industry committee  This is a difficult question to answer. Let me show you where the data are on the moon right now. From the Canadian perspective, the answer is simple. We don't have such a large lunar community; we do have a large academic Martian community. From a Canadian perspective, my decision-making is easy in this area.

Industry committee  This is a very difficult question to answer in a sound bite. It really requires a long discussion. I was up north just this summer, in the far north. We're planning to put up a ground station quite far up north, and I was up there for the first time. I think the conditions speak for themselves.

Industry committee  We have a satellite up there right now that has the best optical instrument in the world. It is making those measurements, but we need to make it operational and put more of them up there. I can talk about just this for an hour.

Industry committee  What I said earlier was that in the face of government priorities, space should be an essential element of government infrastructure. This is the one sentence that is very important to get everybody to remember. If I take each government department, say Agriculture and Agri-Food, I can find a resonating example.