Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  Middle Bay is the one that has the MOU. Middle Bay is a not-for-profit organization. The project was structured that way because it was the only way that the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation could put in the money. They want to make sure that the information gets disseminated to the public.

Fisheries committee  Yes, and they have established an MOU with a large supplier, a well-known distributor. We have not received permission to disclose the name and there's a competitive side to this.

Fisheries committee  On the value side, the key thing is that this distributor has given them targets of the price they will pay for the salmon. The closed containment will be able to meet those numbers.

Fisheries committee  Of course.

Fisheries committee  Absolutely.

Fisheries committee  With the Middle Bay project, SDTC has contributed or has committed $5.7 million on a $17 million project. Primarily, the money has come from two sources: a company called AgriMarine, which is the one that has the intellectual property on the project and the one responsible for marketing it; and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which is interested in ensuring that the information coming out of the project can be made public and that people can learn from it.

Fisheries committee  Absolutely: thank you. SDTC goes through a gated process of approval. One of the things we're very conscious of is of course the sensitivity to how much money small companies have. Over 93% of our applicants are small and medium-sized enterprises, with the emphasis on the “s”; therefore, we take them through a process where they can demonstrate their ability and provide information.

Fisheries committee  The other 7% is actually large corporations. That's a challenging one: why does a large corporation that has a lot of money need to be funded by government funds? We sometimes get accused of putting them through a little more rigour, if you like, but the reality is they need to explain why they cannot fund those projects.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  Mr. Chair, am I allowed to make a pitch for SDTC at this point?

Fisheries committee  We believe there's always a need. One of the things that SDTC does a lot is to push the applicants to demonstrate why they need federal funding. We try to leverage other opportunities, such as partnering with Tides Canada, encouraging investors communally, and so on. There's definitely a continued need for that.

Fisheries committee  Certainly. From a general project prospective, as I indicated earlier, the project was funded in 2007. It was one of the first projects that SDTC approved in this area. At the time, we utilized the information that was available in working with DFO. One of the other things we also brought to bear was to make sure that the regulatory bodies and the people who were interested in the information were participating in the steering committees, so that we could have as much knowledge going in and understanding of the issues as possible.

Fisheries committee  When we evaluate a project, we look at it from all aspects of sustainability. The first thing it must have is innovation. Innovation can be that it's new intellectual property being developed, or it can be that you're taking a technology that exists today and redeploying it to address a need.

Fisheries committee  I will pass this over to Mr. Watson for the detailed answer. Just as an initial comment, the reviewers focus on evaluating the information presented and whether there is substantive documentation and material to be able to get to an analysis of it. Sometimes they are not necessarily able to reach a conclusion.