JCMT Canadian Time Allocation Group

Canada has a 25% share, Netherlands has 20%, and the United Kingdom has the remaining 55%. CTAG prioritizes Canadian JCMT proposals, according to scientific merit. The chair of CTAG takes the prioritized list to the ITAC (international) meeting where the final allocations are made in accordance with each nation's share in the JCMT.

Ethics: The quality and integrity of the Canadian telescope time allocation process owes much to the unselfish efforts of the CTAC-CTAG scientific members and NRC-HIA staff. These people oversee the peer review of most of the proposals submitted to JCMT (sub-mm, FIR) Gemini (NIR, optical), and CFHT (optical).

Expertise: This system assures that the member handling a proposal will have expertise in the relevant subject area. Expert members are more likely to identify capable and objective reviewers, and they provide a critical check and balance during the peer review process.

Efficiency: Because they work with little or no compensation, they allow us to maintain a high level of scientific and technical quality, at minimal cost to the proposal authors and user communities.