Industry committee  The post-secondary institution strategic investment fund is a budget 2016 item with $2 billion to fund capital projects at post-secondary institutions. There are clearly established objectives and criteria for the program. The main focuses are on expansion or improvement of facilities to conduct research and do commercialization, to improve industry-relevant training space, and to improve the environmental sustainability of those facilities.

Industry committee  What's happened is that there are other programs that NSERC does operate in this space, but the IRDI program was similar to what Mitacs did, and Mitacs had been delivering the IRDI internships already. This formalized the situation, where Mitacs would continue to deliver these internships, and we would have a sole source for delivering these internships to make it easier for both businesses and potential interns to navigate.

Industry committee  It does reduce the NSERC budget by $7 million, but the reality was that Mitacs was already delivering those internships, so it doesn't have a material effect on the NSERC budget.