Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and SNOLAB.
These facilities give Canada the best underground laboratory in the world and provide the lowest-radioactivity location ever created. The experiments conducted there are the world's best basic science and are attracting top international scientists and very large-scale new experiments. Many young people are associated with this frontier science and technology, including five new Canada research chairs.
In pushing these technology frontiers, we involve Canadian industry to our mutual benefit. You see some examples here on the page: Vale Inco; Petresa Canada; and BTI, Bubble Technology Industries. We also work extensively with AECL and Ontario Power Generation in our extensive use of heavy water in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
Results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory have really made a substantial impact on the world scene in terms of basic science. They were cited as one of the top two scientific breakthroughs in the world in 2001-02 by Science and Discover magazines and by the American Institute of Physics. We were able to change our understanding of the basic laws of physics in a very fundamental way and we were able to confirm in great detail how energy is generated in the sun.
The new SNOLAB facility, which is an extension of the two-kilometre underground location in Vale Inco's Creighton mine near Sudbury, is largely complete, and it's poised to make further high-impact discoveries, such as determining the identity of the dark matter particles known to make up 23% of the universe but whose express identity is not determined as yet, and also the origin of matter in the early universe. According to a recent high-level international review committee, “For the next 5 to 10 years, SNOLAB has a special window of opportunity: With its great depth (significantly greater than any other underground laboratory) and the proper infrastructure it is uniquely positioned to make Nobel Prize winning discoveries.”
NSERC is providing operating support for Canadian scientists developing new experiments to be sited in SNOLAB, and there will be substantial international contributions to the capital and operating costs of experiments. But the international standard for such basic science laboratories is for them to concentrate on the cost of experiments and for the host country to provide the operation cost for the facility itself, giving our scientists equivalent advantages internationally.
However, there is no current federal program available to us to provide long-term operating support for a major basic science international facility like SNOLAB. Before operations started in 2007, we sought support from Ontario's ORF-RE program and the new CECR program from the federal government. We did receive positive response from the provincial program and we have six years of support there, but we were told that as basic science we did not qualify for CECR without having a substantial commercial objective, and we also did not fall in the four restricted categories of activity for that program.
The level of yearly operating support we're talking about here is about $6 million, of which we have about $3 million secured, assuming we're able to get matching for that. NSERC and CFI councils therefore took immediate ad hoc action in November to provide matching funds for a two-year period in order that we would be able to proceed in a steady way, but we have an immediate challenge in that we must obtain federal support immediately for long-term operating beyond 2009 to match the provincial and the university commitments. The uncertainty of our long-term funding in this situation is making it difficult for us to deal with international experiments wishing to come to the laboratory.
Such uncertainty is a real problem for major facilities like this. Of course we're not the only ones facing this problem: NEPTUNE, the Amundsen icebreaker, the Canadian Light Source at Saskatoon, and, on a somewhat smaller scale, major facilities like HPCVL for large-scale computing have similar difficulties. Combined, the order of magnitude of the required operating support is such that it is far beyond the capacity of granting councils such as NSERC to handle without a significant incremental increase in their yearly funding. In fact, when we originally submitted our application, NSERC was identified as a potential source of operating support. It has sought additional funding for this, but its recent budget increases have been targeted for other things. CFI does provide short-term operating support for their capital projects, but this is for the long term.
If NSERC were to fund these projects from their base budget, it would have to do so at the expense of funding for the research being done at these facilities, creating a situation that would penalize Canadian scientists in their own laboratories for their great ideas.
This is an example of how major science facilities are an important part of the scientific landscape in Canada. These facilities in general have been selected as the best possible. They are partnerships between universities, industry, and government, and they attract Canadian and international scientists and the very best students, preparing them for eventual influential positions in industry and academia.
An overall governmental policy for major science facilities is badly needed to provide a full overview and funding approach from the initial proposals through the life cycle of the projects, including construction, operation, and of course decommissioning when the projects have fulfilled their mission. With such a policy and such facilities as have been put forward so far, Canada can lead the world in these important areas of research.
Thank you for your attention.