Thank you for inviting the National Research Council to your meeting.
The National Research Council is a powerful tool of the federal government, with a mandate to transform science and technology into social and economic well-being for Canada. It does this working closely with industry, and indeed working with industry has been its mandate for its whole 93-year history.
One of the key programs that NRC has for working with industry is its industrial research assistance program, or IRAP. IRAP provides innovation support to technology-based Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, and has been doing this as part of NRC for over 60 years. It delivers the program through a network of experienced technology advisers located in more than 100 communities across the country. They work directly with the SMEs to address their technology challenges with advice, guidance, and business assistance, but also some financial support.
IRAP's financial support is for R and D projects or R and D related expenses, and the cost is shared with the company, ensuring their own investment in R and D. We generally pay the cost of the salaries of the technology workers involved in the projects and do not pay general operating or infrastructure costs.
The amounts may be small, but they come at a critical time in the evolution of a small business. Last year we provided $70 million in contributions of this type to firms. There is a strong demand for these funds, and last year the program was fully committed very early in the year, as early as May.
IRAP also administers a program with funding from HRSDC to help SMEs hire graduates from universities and colleges. Through this youth program, IRAP helps the small business hire graduates by paying a portion of their salary. It's a very successful program. We've found that 91%, on average, of these students are eventually hired by the firms.
The incremental resources that IRAP received through the budget of $100 million a year for two years will be invested in these two highly successful programs: the contributions to firms for R and D and the youth program. As such, they'll use the existing IRAP terms and conditions, existing management frameworks, and existing delivery systems. This has allowed us to move quickly and to get the money into the hands of Canadian SMEs. The full $200 million will go to firms. There are no operating funds for NRC-IRAP included in this funding.
For these funds, we will use the same criteria for selecting projects as in the past, but we will be focused on selecting projects that contribute to innovations that will position these firms for the future. We're not supporting just to survive through the difficult times, but to allow them to prosper and grow when the economy turns around.
As these are well-established programs, we have robust management and control systems already in place: existing terms and conditions, standard operating procedures, a standard contribution agreement, a risk-based management framework, and lots of audits and evaluations. We've been audited seven times in the last five years.
These additional funds provided to IRAP by budget 2009 are very much appreciated, and the access to them through vote 35 was critical for their delivery. In order to optimize the expenditure of the funds, commitment authority is needed early in the year, and waiting for supplementary estimates would probably have necessitated the lapsing of funds. Since it's a large amount incrementally, in proportion to the NRC budget, we were not able to cash-manage it ourselves. Based on the experience we have with the program to date, we estimated that $76 million of the $100 million would be required from vote 35.
How are we doing with committing them? We are right on schedule. Our regular A-base contribution to firms was fully committed as of the first week of April this year. For the new funds, as of May 31, 57% of the $71 million for firms was committed, and 90% of the funding for the youth program was committed. They're moving quickly, but I want to assure you that we're treating them with the same due diligence and attention to documentation that we would in any other year.
We've committed to targets for the number of new SMEs to be reached with these funds of 720 this year and 640 next year, and for the youth program, 333 graduates supported this year and 667 next year. We are fully confident that we can meet these targets.
We're also monitoring the number of jobs supported. As of May 31, we have already identified 1,773 jobs supported in 458 new firms and 178 graduates hired through these vote 35 funds.
So the uptake of these new funds has been outstanding, and I want to thank Parliament for their continuing support of NRC and the IRAP program.