Nice to see research money....but since the actual big time research labs created under Paul Martin were trashed by Harper.....it's just been political outhouse whistling since.
At the risk of sounding repetitive:
I have been travelling a lot this year and my friends that I visit are mostly Boomer Liberals and NDP types....and they just can't stand the the sight or the voice of the present PM....to the point where no announcement including the budget matters anymore, except the one that says he's leaving... if he doesn't, thereby taking with him PP's biggest talking point - the Liberals are toast, PP gets 200 seats and all those tinfoil hat People's Party types get to talk about their version of science...
As much as this article makes me happy (Thanks, Paul)...I just can't shake the fact that Canada is in a drift - either the PM and Co. have never answered the question "Where do you see Canada in 5 years or 10?"...or I have just quit listening...
...and before you comment, yes I know that PP has not suggested any future at all for the country ....
A minor quibble on this excellent follow-up on the budget, as was repeatedly stressed by the Bouchard committee, studentships and fellowships represent perhaps 10% of the total students and postdocs. The vast majority are funded off research grants which will not change significantly (certainly not above inflation) for the next two years according to the budget. Many institutions are setting minimum stipends and salary supports but these are quite often lower than the 40/70K levels for federally supported grad students and postdocs. Hence, there will be a period over the next few years of major restructuring where fewer trainees will likely be taken on. This isn't necessarily bad as we've been acting as though we're driving a Maserati when the engine nd suspension is actually that from a Hillman Imp. In 2027/2028, there will be more funds available for the grant councils to better support trainees, but until then expect some quiet chaos.
Loved your comparison of the Maserati and the Hillman Imp! As a teenager in the 1960s/‘70s I drove an Imp in the UK. Thank you for prompting the memory.
Spending more on research and science is fine, as is taking science policy seriously. But there is one reform that I think would be very useful and that I never see discussed. It is the distribution of the funding among Canadian universities.
Currently, research money is sprinkled widely among too many universities. This leads to a lack of concerted effort and a scarcity of centers of international excellence. Instead, it seems to me, we should have five or six research universities, i.e. universities that also teach, but that have a heavy concentration of expertise in selected fields. It is only by building such centers that Canada will become an international player.
Instead we spread our money and our efforts thinly over some sixty universities. I understand the political need to do this, to make sure that various regions and various interests all get their share of the funding. This is clearly good politics. But it will never result in a top notch research universities.
Note that the vast bulk of existing universities can continue their very useful role as teaching institutions.
The U-15 (https://u15.ca/) is an attempt - albeit from the University side - to focus more research in a smaller number of comprehensive universities across Canada.
@George Hariton I seem to remember back in 2010 (?) There was a proposal made by the "Big Five" Canadian universities (Toronto, McGill, UBC, Alberta and Montreal) that they should focus more on research, and that the rest of Canada’s universities should focus on undergraduate teaching. The Big Five would thus receive the bulk of research funding. It didn't go over well with the smaller uni's.
Yes. I thought that was a missed opportunity. At the time I was in the private sector, but often needed the services of experts. I discovered that there was little point in approaching the second tier of universities.
Excellent points, thank-you. The recent "Oppenheimer" movie has a few thinking about how that "Copenhagen School" put a bunch of the best minds all into each other's company, and great strides were made in a short time. I love the title of the one Disch novel: "Camp Concentration".
Recent oped by Sarkonak highlights the extent to which Trudeau govt academic, research chair funding restricted by requirements to comply with DEI, gender ideology, progressive values with little regard for merit or emerging technological advances ect. Doesn’t foster challenging discourse, freedom to innovate, create or think outside the box if academics shackled by a government’s preferred ideology
Very interesting article; well done. I suspect Poilievre would be reluctant to reverse these budgetary initiatives. But I would appreciate an article regarding the research done by Canadian businesses and corporations along with the budgets that go with it. I might be wrong and please correct me if I am but I believe the Canadian business community is a laggard on research spending compared with other G7 countries. The research needed for a healthy economy can’t all be done on taxpayer funding.
I found your March 21, 2023 post very illuminating for two reasons. You made more than one reference to how the Liberal government ignores science and research, and yet they include in every announcement these days that they are following "the science." Secondly, they cancelled the science research program they inherited from PM Harper, they recently shut down the Canadian Digital Adoption Program (which you wrote about recently), and they have closed the program that allowed funding house purchases with RRSP money, and yet they sneer at the Conservatives at every opportunity and ask "so what will you cut if you are elected, all you care about is austerity." Every decision they make is about politics and votes, they just don't care about ordinary Canadians.
My concern as raised elsewhere is if you are a white male forget getting a research grant. Does DEI count more than the potential of the research being proposed?
Justin Trudeau created a new advisory panel for science and technology strategies after he abolished the one set up by Stephen Harper when he first came to office.
I may be misremembering, but isn't this what happened with the panels to appoint Supreme Court judges and the Governor General? Harper created independent advisory panels who would interview potential candidates and create a shortlist that he would make the final choice from. Trudeau scrapped those panels, and then brought similar ones back after his own appointments started to go pear-shaped. He lucked out with Malcolm Rowe as a Supreme Court justice when there didn't seem to be any other candidates that met his standards, but who can forget Julie Payette's reign as Governor General, no matter how hard they try?
Has Trudeau been re-inventing Harper's wheel on all these things?
“The Ontario Liberals never had to run a francophone university for Ontario, they just had to promise one and watch Doug Ford twist.”
This line stuck in my craw. If Liberals want to understand democratic decline, start here. If public policy is just a means of getting reelected instead of a tool for actually delivering the good stuff to the citizenry, then what’s the point of voting? Voters aren’t stupid, they can smell empty promises. If the allegedly pro-government party won’t fund and execute government programs adequately, why should anyone vote for them? Might as well vote for the party that promises to burn it all down.
Increasing science funding is certainly a good thing, but will this policy get watered down by the accountants? Will we be hearing about how the money isn’t really flowing as quickly as promised? Why isn’t the government shouting about their great science accomplishments from the rooftops? Hey everyone, look what taxpayer dollars can do! We cured myelogenous leukemia!
I don’t want to guess, but if I was told it’s been nearly two decades and dozens of pieces on the dusty corner of science and technology policy to date, I’d say that felt about right.
The effort is dwarfed by the boreal forest sized promotional pieces from aspirants, participants and promoters of R&D spending. Much has been said but not that much has changed since the days in the Mulroney government when the Network of Centres of Excellence were first formed - they added ‘Network’ to avoid leaving parts of the country out of university research funding. Excellence necessarily but who are we kidding?
My own read concludes that the heat was on after the last budget and something had to be done. Plus this at least had the added benefit of allowing Ministers to question the CPC’s belief in science (not just support). And we saw some of that over the weekend. The Conservatives ‘gag scientists’ vs a government that just ships them back to China with some catastrophic virus samples in the gift bag. It also played to the Liberal’s defensive priority ridings in Montreal (there are currently no offensive priority ridings anywhere). I gather it’s the leader in artificial intelligence. According to the Government. Ours. And China’s. As they reportedly have intellectual property co-ventures in Canada’s R&D - the likes of which are unavailable to them elsewhere - the US, for instance. Liberals also know what any investor relations advisor knows - AI is a hot button. Stocks track up or down based on a company’s ability to invoke ‘AI’ during earnings calls. I assume the same is true in opinion research.
This week is earnings week for Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and the actual leaders in AI. We’ll likely see some pretty eye watering numbers. Together, they represent market values greater than the GDP of continents. NVIDIA typically adds the value of General Motors and Ford in the hours following their earnings calls. AI’s not for the faint of heart. Tim Cook seems to think it’s not for Apple. At a market value greater than Canada‘s GDP, you’re left wondering what Tim knows that we don’t.
My own preference would have R&D efforts informed by the common interest in growing world class companies who compete in global markets. Reward/encourage, invest and retain intellectual property for the expressed purpose of economic growth. Change it up. We’ve tried a variation of the tune that was played last week, and it’s hard to find any real evidence that we’re advancing much.
Retired after 40 years in computers, still have friends in the game. They're enthused about AI-assistants for coding, but I asked one if getting half-hour jobs done in 5 minutes (because he just has to check the AI-written code), had changed his life as much as 'the spreadsheet' did. Long pause to think, and then, slowly: "No".
They're a great new tool, but not a Brave New World, and the notion that we have to "keep up", or face some "AI Gap" like the "Missile Gap" is just wrong.
The more somebody knows about computers, the more they tend to talk of similarities between the AI sales job of recent months, and, say: "blockchain" and "3D printing", or "disintermediation" and "multimedia" a decade before them. All were going to change the world. It's just a big, hard thing to change.
Thanks for reporting on this because it didn’t get much attention. Politic aside, we cannot afford to fall behind in science and research, no matter who is in power, because it’s how tomorrow’s economy will be build. I agree a potential Polievre’s government may repurpose some of this spending but I am very doubtful that the Ai funding will be reduced. No matter the colour of the government we don’t have choice to invest in AI
Not just tomorrow’s economy. Whenever I step back and think about it I am stunned that we don’t force governments to spend 10x more on medical research. Is everyone and their family members all feeling fine? Family doctors and hospitals twiddling their thumbs wondering where everyone went? No one suffering from heart disease, cancer or one of the 100 arthritides?
No, that’s undergraduate students. Postgrads and postdocs are funded through federal scholarships and fellowships and, in the majority, by research grants. Research is largely federally supported (plus philanthropy).
All that money into a black hole called research councils. If it is like everything else this government puts money in there will be a low return on investment. Where will all this great learning go?
Many years ago my wife (fiancé then) was selling her little orange Chrysler Sunbeam in Scotland. Nice little car. She told the prospective buyer it had a Hillman Imp engine. I died a little inside but she was very cute and he bought it nonetheless.
Nice to see research money....but since the actual big time research labs created under Paul Martin were trashed by Harper.....it's just been political outhouse whistling since.
At the risk of sounding repetitive:
I have been travelling a lot this year and my friends that I visit are mostly Boomer Liberals and NDP types....and they just can't stand the the sight or the voice of the present PM....to the point where no announcement including the budget matters anymore, except the one that says he's leaving... if he doesn't, thereby taking with him PP's biggest talking point - the Liberals are toast, PP gets 200 seats and all those tinfoil hat People's Party types get to talk about their version of science...
As much as this article makes me happy (Thanks, Paul)...I just can't shake the fact that Canada is in a drift - either the PM and Co. have never answered the question "Where do you see Canada in 5 years or 10?"...or I have just quit listening...
...and before you comment, yes I know that PP has not suggested any future at all for the country ....
You nailed it - on many dimensions.
A minor quibble on this excellent follow-up on the budget, as was repeatedly stressed by the Bouchard committee, studentships and fellowships represent perhaps 10% of the total students and postdocs. The vast majority are funded off research grants which will not change significantly (certainly not above inflation) for the next two years according to the budget. Many institutions are setting minimum stipends and salary supports but these are quite often lower than the 40/70K levels for federally supported grad students and postdocs. Hence, there will be a period over the next few years of major restructuring where fewer trainees will likely be taken on. This isn't necessarily bad as we've been acting as though we're driving a Maserati when the engine nd suspension is actually that from a Hillman Imp. In 2027/2028, there will be more funds available for the grant councils to better support trainees, but until then expect some quiet chaos.
Loved your comparison of the Maserati and the Hillman Imp! As a teenager in the 1960s/‘70s I drove an Imp in the UK. Thank you for prompting the memory.
Not a bad plan to spend on research. Rachel Thomas as finance min? Why not. Us Lethbridge folk would be happy
Incidentally I'm sheepish about misspelling her first name. I've fixed it now.
Spending more on research and science is fine, as is taking science policy seriously. But there is one reform that I think would be very useful and that I never see discussed. It is the distribution of the funding among Canadian universities.
Currently, research money is sprinkled widely among too many universities. This leads to a lack of concerted effort and a scarcity of centers of international excellence. Instead, it seems to me, we should have five or six research universities, i.e. universities that also teach, but that have a heavy concentration of expertise in selected fields. It is only by building such centers that Canada will become an international player.
Instead we spread our money and our efforts thinly over some sixty universities. I understand the political need to do this, to make sure that various regions and various interests all get their share of the funding. This is clearly good politics. But it will never result in a top notch research universities.
Note that the vast bulk of existing universities can continue their very useful role as teaching institutions.
The U-15 (https://u15.ca/) is an attempt - albeit from the University side - to focus more research in a smaller number of comprehensive universities across Canada.
@George Hariton I seem to remember back in 2010 (?) There was a proposal made by the "Big Five" Canadian universities (Toronto, McGill, UBC, Alberta and Montreal) that they should focus more on research, and that the rest of Canada’s universities should focus on undergraduate teaching. The Big Five would thus receive the bulk of research funding. It didn't go over well with the smaller uni's.
Yes. I thought that was a missed opportunity. At the time I was in the private sector, but often needed the services of experts. I discovered that there was little point in approaching the second tier of universities.
Excellent points, thank-you. The recent "Oppenheimer" movie has a few thinking about how that "Copenhagen School" put a bunch of the best minds all into each other's company, and great strides were made in a short time. I love the title of the one Disch novel: "Camp Concentration".
Recent oped by Sarkonak highlights the extent to which Trudeau govt academic, research chair funding restricted by requirements to comply with DEI, gender ideology, progressive values with little regard for merit or emerging technological advances ect. Doesn’t foster challenging discourse, freedom to innovate, create or think outside the box if academics shackled by a government’s preferred ideology
Very interesting article; well done. I suspect Poilievre would be reluctant to reverse these budgetary initiatives. But I would appreciate an article regarding the research done by Canadian businesses and corporations along with the budgets that go with it. I might be wrong and please correct me if I am but I believe the Canadian business community is a laggard on research spending compared with other G7 countries. The research needed for a healthy economy can’t all be done on taxpayer funding.
I found your March 21, 2023 post very illuminating for two reasons. You made more than one reference to how the Liberal government ignores science and research, and yet they include in every announcement these days that they are following "the science." Secondly, they cancelled the science research program they inherited from PM Harper, they recently shut down the Canadian Digital Adoption Program (which you wrote about recently), and they have closed the program that allowed funding house purchases with RRSP money, and yet they sneer at the Conservatives at every opportunity and ask "so what will you cut if you are elected, all you care about is austerity." Every decision they make is about politics and votes, they just don't care about ordinary Canadians.
My concern as raised elsewhere is if you are a white male forget getting a research grant. Does DEI count more than the potential of the research being proposed?
2024 CIHR grants include:
- $400,000 to study emergency-room medicine https://www.crchudequebec.ulaval.ca/recherche/chercheurs/eric-mercier/
-$8 million to study immune response
https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/prestigious-research-chair-queen-s
- I'll leave it to you to count the dudes in this large group studying nerve degeneration in aging https://webapps.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/decisions/p/main.html?lang=en#fq={!tag=competitioncd}competitioncd%3A202312CND&sort=namesort%20asc&start=0&rows=20
Justin Trudeau created a new advisory panel for science and technology strategies after he abolished the one set up by Stephen Harper when he first came to office.
I may be misremembering, but isn't this what happened with the panels to appoint Supreme Court judges and the Governor General? Harper created independent advisory panels who would interview potential candidates and create a shortlist that he would make the final choice from. Trudeau scrapped those panels, and then brought similar ones back after his own appointments started to go pear-shaped. He lucked out with Malcolm Rowe as a Supreme Court justice when there didn't seem to be any other candidates that met his standards, but who can forget Julie Payette's reign as Governor General, no matter how hard they try?
Has Trudeau been re-inventing Harper's wheel on all these things?
“The Ontario Liberals never had to run a francophone university for Ontario, they just had to promise one and watch Doug Ford twist.”
This line stuck in my craw. If Liberals want to understand democratic decline, start here. If public policy is just a means of getting reelected instead of a tool for actually delivering the good stuff to the citizenry, then what’s the point of voting? Voters aren’t stupid, they can smell empty promises. If the allegedly pro-government party won’t fund and execute government programs adequately, why should anyone vote for them? Might as well vote for the party that promises to burn it all down.
Increasing science funding is certainly a good thing, but will this policy get watered down by the accountants? Will we be hearing about how the money isn’t really flowing as quickly as promised? Why isn’t the government shouting about their great science accomplishments from the rooftops? Hey everyone, look what taxpayer dollars can do! We cured myelogenous leukemia!
I’ll add my thanks for this piece.
I don’t want to guess, but if I was told it’s been nearly two decades and dozens of pieces on the dusty corner of science and technology policy to date, I’d say that felt about right.
The effort is dwarfed by the boreal forest sized promotional pieces from aspirants, participants and promoters of R&D spending. Much has been said but not that much has changed since the days in the Mulroney government when the Network of Centres of Excellence were first formed - they added ‘Network’ to avoid leaving parts of the country out of university research funding. Excellence necessarily but who are we kidding?
My own read concludes that the heat was on after the last budget and something had to be done. Plus this at least had the added benefit of allowing Ministers to question the CPC’s belief in science (not just support). And we saw some of that over the weekend. The Conservatives ‘gag scientists’ vs a government that just ships them back to China with some catastrophic virus samples in the gift bag. It also played to the Liberal’s defensive priority ridings in Montreal (there are currently no offensive priority ridings anywhere). I gather it’s the leader in artificial intelligence. According to the Government. Ours. And China’s. As they reportedly have intellectual property co-ventures in Canada’s R&D - the likes of which are unavailable to them elsewhere - the US, for instance. Liberals also know what any investor relations advisor knows - AI is a hot button. Stocks track up or down based on a company’s ability to invoke ‘AI’ during earnings calls. I assume the same is true in opinion research.
This week is earnings week for Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and the actual leaders in AI. We’ll likely see some pretty eye watering numbers. Together, they represent market values greater than the GDP of continents. NVIDIA typically adds the value of General Motors and Ford in the hours following their earnings calls. AI’s not for the faint of heart. Tim Cook seems to think it’s not for Apple. At a market value greater than Canada‘s GDP, you’re left wondering what Tim knows that we don’t.
My own preference would have R&D efforts informed by the common interest in growing world class companies who compete in global markets. Reward/encourage, invest and retain intellectual property for the expressed purpose of economic growth. Change it up. We’ve tried a variation of the tune that was played last week, and it’s hard to find any real evidence that we’re advancing much.
Retired after 40 years in computers, still have friends in the game. They're enthused about AI-assistants for coding, but I asked one if getting half-hour jobs done in 5 minutes (because he just has to check the AI-written code), had changed his life as much as 'the spreadsheet' did. Long pause to think, and then, slowly: "No".
They're a great new tool, but not a Brave New World, and the notion that we have to "keep up", or face some "AI Gap" like the "Missile Gap" is just wrong.
The more somebody knows about computers, the more they tend to talk of similarities between the AI sales job of recent months, and, say: "blockchain" and "3D printing", or "disintermediation" and "multimedia" a decade before them. All were going to change the world. It's just a big, hard thing to change.
Thanks for reporting on this because it didn’t get much attention. Politic aside, we cannot afford to fall behind in science and research, no matter who is in power, because it’s how tomorrow’s economy will be build. I agree a potential Polievre’s government may repurpose some of this spending but I am very doubtful that the Ai funding will be reduced. No matter the colour of the government we don’t have choice to invest in AI
Not just tomorrow’s economy. Whenever I step back and think about it I am stunned that we don’t force governments to spend 10x more on medical research. Is everyone and their family members all feeling fine? Family doctors and hospitals twiddling their thumbs wondering where everyone went? No one suffering from heart disease, cancer or one of the 100 arthritides?
I totally agree. Investing in science and research is a no brainer for multiple reasons. Too bad that it is often a hard case to make to politicians
I like the increased funding to people in graduate programs, but isn’t that usually funded by the provinces?
No, that’s undergraduate students. Postgrads and postdocs are funded through federal scholarships and fellowships and, in the majority, by research grants. Research is largely federally supported (plus philanthropy).
All that money into a black hole called research councils. If it is like everything else this government puts money in there will be a low return on investment. Where will all this great learning go?
A companion piece in Stack
https://open.substack.com/pub/acceptableviews/p/guest-post-liberal-capital-gains?r=2btv2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email)
puts this lost leader in perspective.
The companion piece was excellent!
Many years ago my wife (fiancé then) was selling her little orange Chrysler Sunbeam in Scotland. Nice little car. She told the prospective buyer it had a Hillman Imp engine. I died a little inside but she was very cute and he bought it nonetheless.