Yes. I'm the assistant deputy minister in charge of those frameworks, and you're absolutely right that we are deeply involved in the process of renewing the framework.
For those of you who aren't familiar with this program, I mentioned at the outset that our engagement with provinces is very intense because we both have jurisdiction. It's one of the unusual areas where there is concurrent jurisdiction under the Constitution. This means that for farmers and the agri-food sector achieve the greatest benefit, government policy and programming have to be aligned.
This is a long-standing agreement that we've had with provinces since 2003. We've had three frameworks. We're in the third now, called Growing Forward 2, but it expires on March 31, 2018. Currently that's an arrangement whereby there's $2 billion in cost-shared programming, delivered by provinces and cost-shared 60% by the federal government and 40% by provinces. There's an additional $1 billion over five years devoted by the federal government to types of programming largely oriented toward science, research and development, innovation, and competitiveness. Some of it is directed at producers and some of it is directed at agri-food processors. Some of it is in collaboration with science being carried out in industry and in the private sector.
The process of coming up for a renewal involves ministers agreeing on the scope of what the agreement will be for the next five years—that is to say, what's important and what the priorities are within the policy framework—and then agreeing, on an increasingly granular level of detail, about what kinds of programming and what kinds of policy thrusts are required to meet agreed-upon outcomes. We have a significantly detailed road map to guide us, and a discussion among ministers is likely to take place in the next month or two; based on that direction, we'll have some significant advancement of the framework at the July 2016 ministerial meeting. That will include ministers of federal, provincial, and territorial governments. They'll set us in the direction of establishing their priorities.
By late 2017 we hope to have an agreement in place, at least as regards our understanding of what our program priorities can be, so that we can implement it for 2018.