The NSERC alliance program is the main vehicle for partnerships between Canadian researchers and companies. There are other partners on those grants as well, but it's largely partnerships with companies. The funding goes to the researcher in each case, not to the company.
It was the first program that enacted the current guidelines on research partnerships. These are the guidelines that have been in place since July 2021. In that case, the way the process works, as we discussed a little earlier, is that a questionnaire is filled out by the researcher endorsed by the institution. NSERC staff, who have been trained to identify where there could be security risks, will then assess whether that needs to be brought forward for further assessment by the security agencies.
An important aspect is that the merit review of the research and the security review are separated so that they are not kind of conflating the quality of the research and the security risk. Otherwise, there would be a concern on the part of the researchers that the two are tied, rather than research being assessed on its merits.
During the pilot phase of that program, which went from July 2021 to July 2022, about 96% of the applications that were submitted were validated as not needing to have research security assessment. In that period, about 48 out of 1,158 were brought forward for further security assessment. A very small number then went to the security agencies. Of those, I believe about 36 were actually denied funding.
It's done in a way that tries to protect the privacy of the information that's shared. It also involves agreements between NSERC and the security agencies on how that information can be used, which protects the integrity of the research and the process.
It has actually been a pretty positive effort. It's now been expanded beyond the alliance program to biomedical research programs. It's expected that it will be rolled out across a broader range of programs over time.