Let me start by noting that these projects are all international in scope. In fact, all of the projects the witnesses have spoken about require significant international partnership. That means there is a significant engagement and collaboration internationally right from the outset in terms of identifying what the scientific priorities are, coming to agreement on who is actually going to participate at an international level, and then working to acquire the resources from within each of the appropriate jurisdictions that the scientists are coming from to bring their share of the project to the table. It requires a significant amount of collaboration and coordination.
It also takes a significant amount of time. We're talking about bringing together, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars of capital funding, plus long-term commitment for operational support--typically anywhere from 10 to 20 years of support, which together equal approximately the total capital investment.
In my view, Canada has done quite well in this particular arena; however, we have suffered from the fact that we don't have a big-science strategy. We don't have a single port of call or a single organization within the country that takes a leadership role in identifying where Canada should put its resources to most effectively leverage its impact internationally.