Thank you. That's a great question.
We've been building. Back in 2007 we created this School of Ocean Technology. At that point in time, companies would advertise in Canada in three newspaper ads for a certain period of time for remote-operated vehicle operators.
We brought in Bob Ballard, of Titanic fame. We partnered with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and we created the first ROV, and now we have a degree in underwater systems in Canada.
The students, our students, who historically were rural Newfoundlanders like myself, were mainly from Newfoundland and mainly working in Newfoundland. We've created a School of Ocean Technology on the ocean mapping side. Right now I have students from every province in Canada and all three territories. We're under contract to the Nunavut government, and in partnership with the Nunavut Arctic College, to do fisheries and marine training in the Arctic. We have instructors spread across those 27 communities, probably burning diesel, but it is truly a cachet to become Canada's marine institute.
We also have five maritime schools in Canada at the certification level, but not the degree or the master's. We built that in partnership with those five colleges so they can come in as well.
We simulate the ocean on 24 ship simulators with the world's largest flume tank. It simulates towing the bottom, or offshore structures, but we don't have access to the ocean, so Holyrood for us was to take the outside facilities for safety and marine training and to put it on the water in a sheltered bay in -1° water for a portion of the year. It's very cold water that Charles Randell can tell you about.
Our students now are from across Canada. We've had 120 graduates to date in the underwater vehicles degree program. They're working in Angola, they're working in the North Sea, and they're working intensively in the Gulf of Mexico. They make six figures and they live in Canada.
It's the positioning of Canada piece that we've been doing. This facility—I'll come to your question—will put the subsea infrastructure in place. We have millions of dollars worth of ROVs donated by Oceaneering, the Canadian office of the international company. We have a large number of donations of life-saving equipment to the school of ocean safety by Husky Energy and Hibernia Management & Development Company Ltd. We've had industry support to get to the $15 million to $20 million we've spent to date, and huge support from ACOA on proof of concept and getting the nucleus going. Now we're at the stage of major building.