The $100 million is a match-funding program, so it is a public-private partnership with one component being to stimulate private investment in brain research. So a potential envelope of $200 million over the next five years will be allocated to the three research programs I described: the team grants, the training fellowships, and the operational support to national technology platforms. We will do this through an open-competition model, and then national and international peer review, which, as Dr. Kaplan described, was our practice with the brain repair program.
For us, what is most critical is that we are supporting excellent and innovative research that is benchmarked against international standards. We work with the CIHR to ensure that the peer review process matches the gold standard, and we work with other organizations that match that standard.
I think there are two features that set us apart. One is that we have a little bit more latitude to fund riskier research. We don't have to fund just incremental research, because as Dr. Kaplan described, we're looking for the best ideas, no matter where they come from. If it means bringing a chemist together with a physicist and an engineer to do spinal cord repair, we're willing to look at it, if it's peer reviewed. It's a very important feature.
The second feature is that we work closely with the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, and we work with and invite as partners all voluntary health organizations, provincial agencies, institutions, and research centres, so that there's an exchange of understanding about key priorities and the key areas of promise. It is not a top-down approach. We have predetermined certain strategic priorities. It is very much a living, bottom-up approach where there's flexibility to pursue the best research as it emerges.