Thank you very much.
We work with universities, colleges and schools across the country, many of which now have dedicated space programs. For all of the missions that I mentioned, there is usually a principal investigator at the heart of it: a scientist who has dedicated his or her life to exploring that star, advancing that mission and advancing that technology. Sometimes they work in industry as well, but often they're attached to universities.
In fact, there's also interesting growth that we see out of the University of Toronto with Space Flight Laboratory and Robert Zee. There's a gentleman there who believed in smaller missions, and that's one of the things that we've seen over time. Spacecraft have become smaller. We're miniaturizing the technology, which enables us to do much more and launch more at a relatively lower cost.
The science community is hugely important to us, and they're very passionate. There are experts in astronomy, experts in physics and experts in space science—you name it. Canada has extraordinary researchers. That's often why we're sought after. It's often why we're invited to be a part of missions. Often these are the questions: How do you find a budget for it? Who's going to be financing it? Is it feasible? Is it at a technology readiness level so that we can actually advance it? How long will that take? Those are the kinds of discussions we have.
We also collaborate very much with other government departments, as I mentioned. My colleague Madame Durand co-chairs a governance table of over 20 government departments to look at the demands for space services and solutions in Canada and make sure that we're planning for the long term together. Sometimes budget requests may come from the environment department but have a small space aspect because of the Canadian Space Agency's involvement.