Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I can respond to that question.
For example, currently at the University of Saskatchewan we have the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, which developed Canada's first COVID vaccine. My colleague Professor Volker Gerdts appeared in front of this committee. We also house Canada's only synchrotron facility, called Canadian Light Source. These facilities are funded through a mechanism that is within Canada, CFI. These are called MSI, major science infrastructure funding competitions. Every five to six years, there's a competition. An external international review panel comes to visit these facilities.
For example, in the current round of MSI funding, we projected the operational costs of both of these national facilities for the next five to six years. Because of tight budgets, we were encouraged to look at a 15% reduction in the operating budget of the facilities. That was quite challenging. We believe the reason for this is that CFI, the current funding model, as my colleague from the agricultural college talked about, has served us very well for the last more than 20 years to allow equipment for individual researchers and the creation of larger facilities.
What we are proposing is that we need a different funding model that looks at a large facility. Whenever Canada decides to build a major science facility, from the day the shovel goes into the ground over the life cycle, which may be 20, 30 or 40 years, we should be able to project the cost of operating that facility and make a decision as to how we will fund it between the federal and provincial jurisdictions.
The second layer of complexity is the partnership money that we need to secure, as universities, from the provincial and other entities to complement the funding that will come from the federal government. That creates a patchwork funding model, which is not very conducive to operating these large national facilities. These facilities are also used by hundreds of international researchers who come to Canada, thereby creating prominence for Canadian science on a global stage.
Therefore, an adequate and newer funding model for these facilities is something that we need. We have first-hand experience at the University of Saskatchewan, because we operate these three national facilities for Canadian science.
Thank you.