Commitment to science questioned

Critics say Ottawa offers inadequate vision, funding

By Mohammed Adam, Canwest News Service March 7, 2009

From their high perches in the world of Canadian research, former national science adviser Arthur Carty and McGill University neuroscientist David Colman see Canada at a crossroads in research and development.

Despite the energy, tremendous potential and growing cachet of Canadian research scientists, experts believe the country is drifting, both for lack of adequate funding and a coherent vision from the government.

Studies have shown that scientific research is much more than an academic exercise.

It is critical to a country’s economic well-being and that’s why many governments focus on it. Results of a 1999 study estimated that through its contribution to increased productivity, the benefits of university R&D amount to $15 billion, or about two per cent of Canada’s annual GDP. This translates into between 150,000 and 200,000 jobs—but today, the benefits could be higher.

Spending less

Yet Canada is now spending less and putting scientists out of work. This year, the three granting councils that fund the bulk of research in universities—the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research—received no extra money from the government, even in the recent big-spending stimulus budget.

Worse, under the guise of “strategic review,” the three councils have been asked to cut about $148 million over three years from their budgets—while similar bodies in the U.S. are getting billions from President Barack Obama’s massive stimulus package.

Today, “well below 20 per cent of grant applications” for academic research can be funded, says Jim Turk, who represents 65,000 academics and other staff in more than 120 colleges and universities across the country.

In comparison, Obama has made what New Scientist magazine calls “the biggest bet on science and technology in history,” putting about $25 billion into basic research. Billions of dollars more are going into energy renewal, new electricity grids, space projects and numerous other ventures.

Following Obama’s lead, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown is vowing to “entrench investment in science as a national priority,” recession or no.

But in Canada, experts say the government appears hesitant and uncertain.

“A country as strong and sophisticated as Canada should have a direct and clear understanding of where it has to go to lead the world in terms of science. You have to look forward with vision,” says Colman, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute.

“The United States has a long-range plan and it never lets funding for the National Institutes of Health or National Science Foundation drop terribly. But here the [grants] agency funding is flat or worse. The priorities change and change dramatically every budget year. If, with every budget, you are going to change your view, you are not giving your country a chance to be the best in the world.”

Money into infrastructure

Carty, a former president of the National Research Council and national science adviser under prime ministers Paul Martin and Stephen Harper, agrees. He says the Conservative government has put a lot of money into science infrastructure but its overall approach to research is something of “a puzzle.”

“Things have not gone dramatically bad under the Conservative government, but there is a lack of understanding of how scientific research works,” says Carty, now the director of the Institute of Nanotechnology at the University of Waterloo, in southern Ontario. “We are getting mixed messages. On the one hand, the government is investing in infrastructure.

On the other hand, they are not investing in the research that people have to carry out in the labs … What message is the scientific community to take from that?”

Money for research

Gary Goodyear, the federal minister of state for science and technology, says the critics are wrong. He says the Conservative government has supported scientific research like no other. It has spent a lot of money on infrastructure for which it is very proud, he says, but it has also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into numerous research projects.

Under a 2007 blueprint, the government has not only supported the granting councils, it has given more money to the likes of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Automotive Innovation Fund and the centres of excellence for the commercialization of research, and has established scholarships to attract new talent to Canada.