Canadian researchers have mixed feelings about the 2021 budget presented to the Canadian parliament this week.
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By Brian Owens
The relatively modest research investment outlined in Canada’s new federal budget could make it difficult for the country to recruit and retain scientific talent, Canadian science fears.
The multi-year spending plan announced April 19 includes CA $ 2.2 billion in primarily new funding for life sciences, but much of the money is intended to drive biomedical applications and vaccine development. Many research groups had hoped for more investment in basic research at a time when, just across the border, US President Joe Biden proposed big increases for basic science.
Canada’s three major research councils will share CA $ 250 million towards a new joint biomedical research grant program, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research will receive an additional $ 250 million to fund clinical trials. Universities and research hospitals will receive $ 500 million for life science infrastructure such as equipment and buildings. The government also plans to provide new funding for an existing funding program – known as a national strategy – for artificial intelligence, and to create two new national strategies for genomics and quantum science, each worth about CA $ 400 million. About $ 17 billion will go to efforts to develop low-carbon technologies, support green jobs and meet conservation goals, such as protecting 25% of Canada’s land and water by 2025.
Research advocates welcomed the focus on science as a way to fight the pandemic and rebuild the economy in its aftermath. “Budget 2021 seeks to balance the urgent challenges of the pandemic with a long-term vision for recovery and growth,” said Ottawa, Canada-based scientific advocacy group Evidence for Democracy. But the group also noted that the budget did not include significant increases for basic investigator-led research.
The budget continues the government investments in science that started in the 2018 budget. (Canadian spending plans often span several years.) But the focus remains on targeted funding for boutiques, rather than the broad support for research in general that Canadian scientists have long advocated. “Politicians like to choose investment targets because they want to invest in things that can deliver results quickly,” said Abraham Fuks, an immunology researcher at McGill University in Montreal. “But the science that helps the most is in the longer term,” he added, noting that Canadian scientists have made significant contributions to the basic science behind current vaccines for COVID-19 over decades.
Prior to the release of the budget, Fuks and his colleagues had called on the government to secure major increases in basic science at the country’s three major research councils to keep up with the United States in recruiting and retaining the next generation of scientists. This budget falls short of that request, he says, although he particularly welcomes funding for life science infrastructure and clinical trials in particular. “We don’t see the large investment in basic science that we think is needed” to support research that may not bear fruit for years to come, he says.