"Perspectives"

[Richard Plant]

Hello again all:

Here's the latest "Perspectives" from HSSFC.

Richard Plant
Dept of Drama, Queen's University
and
Graduate Centre for Study of Drama,
University of Toronto

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 14:06:23 -0500
From: Fedcan <fedcan at hssfc.ca>
To: @hssfc.ca
Subject: Perspectives (Volume 3, number 7) - Federal Budget

PERSPECTIVES
An electronic newsletter on research and science policy.  A pilot project
of the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada.

PERSPECTIVES will appear at regular intervals throughout the year and will
be posted on the Federation web site:
http://www.hssfc.ca/Pub/PublicationsEng.html.  Please address your comments
and suggestions to Jacqueline Wright, Executive Assistant, at:
jawright at hssfc.ca.

PERSPECTIVES (Volume 3, Number 7)
March 7, 2000

Editor: Wayne Kondro

Table of contents:
1)      $10-million Budget increase
2)      A drop in the bucket
3)      SSHRC's plans
4)      The CFI windfall
5)      Research Chairs
6)      Genome Canada
7)      Other research measures


SSHRC TO RECEIVE $10-MILLION BUDGET INCREASE
Agency also likely to administer new research chairs program

The federal government will seek to salve the bruise from the stiff blow it
delivered to the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in
last month's federal budget by quietly bolstering the agency's budget by
$10-million, sources say.

The move is intended to help redress the historic deficiency between SSHRC
and the other granting councils, while simultaneously skirting the
tradition of treating all councils equally in the federal budget, officials
said.

The additional monies should allow SSHRC to maintain the current success
rates of its basic research grants and fellowships programs in the face of
skyrocketing demand. But SSHRC president Dr. Marc Renaud says the Council
will also likely have to severely scale back its plans to conduct another
round of competition under its Community-University Research Alliances
program (see Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 5) and to create a Canadian
Institute for Social Statistics (see Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 7).

With the hike falling well short of the $120-million/3-year increase which
SSHRC sought, critics charged that the Liberal government demonstrated an
 appalling' misunderstanding of the processes of innovation and knowledge
generation within the nation.

A DROP IN THE BUCKET
The $10-million increase in SSHRC's budget is a woefully inadequate
response to the pressures which universities face in paying for direct and
indirect research costs associated with the new investments in
infrastructure and personnel, Humanities & Social Sciences Federation of
Canada (HSSFC) president Dr. Louise Forsyth says.

When coupled with Ottawa's plan to create 2,000 new 21st Century Chairs of
Research Excellence (see Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 2), Finance minister
Paul Martin's Feb. 28th budget announcement that Ottawa will inject an
additional $900-million into the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
will only exacerbate the pressures on universities to sacrifice humanities
and social sciences scholarship, Forsyth argued.

"We are absolutely disappointed and really discouraged," Forsyth said. "I'm
discouraged because the money is not there to support the research. I'm
also discouraged because of the absence of recognition of the need for the
research that's done by humanities and social sciences scholars."

"The other thing that discourages me is that I think that the way in which
the federal government is choosing to fund research is seriously skewing
the agenda of universities across the country," Forsyth added.

With universities forced to look within to find funds for research
associated with the new infrastructure and chairs, "they're going to
downplay, more and more, the attention that they might have given to
scholarship in the humanities and social sciences."

"If one looks at the Harris government agenda in Ontario, one can see
universities in the future whose only function is to train technocrats and
to discourage any kind of education that would train minds and produce
people capable of thinking and flexible adaptation," Forsyth noted.

"It's an appalling budget," added Canadian Association of University
Teachers Executive Director Jim Turk. Without additional monies for direct
and indirect research costs associated with new equipment and the hiring of
personnel, "universities will have to come up with their own monies to pay
for the research. So they will be worse off as a result."

"We're quite angry at this budget," Turk added. "There's maybe
$100-million/year for post-secondary education in the Canada Health &
Social Transfer if the provinces decide to spend it (part of the
$2.5-billion/5-year increase in federal cash transfers to the provinces) on
post-secondary education. Yet, there's 6.5 times as much given for income
tax cuts for high income earners. We find that a very poor choice of
priorities."

While critics charged that the government neglected actual research in
favor of funding more visible components of the research enterprise like
infrastructure and chairs, Industry minister John Manley contended that the
overall picture remains favorable as a result of those investments.

"I really look at the support through the research chairs as being a very
significant increase for funding that portion of the population that the
granting councils are meant to do, together with CFI, which will be able to
support the chairs funding. So I think the overall package is exceptionally
good," Manley said.

But Forsyth argued that the Liberal government failed to provide adequate
transfer payments or properly assess the impact which "top down"
programming like the research infrastructure and chairs initiatives will
have across the entire spectrum of the research enterprise and the
university community.

"Despite its protestations, the federal government has no integrated
research strategy for this country and appears to be unaware of the impact
these new large research programs will have on university priorities and
the universities ability to serve the people of this country."

"Without information or consultation, the federal government is in the
process of radically restructuring university teaching and research in this
country, and sacrificing, as they go, some of our most needed and valuable
resources and strengths. Canada's ability to thrive, or even survive, in
the 21st century is in the process of being serious compromised," Forsyth
added.

SSHRC'S PLANS
Assuming that SSHRC's budget is actually increased by $10-million to
roughly $118-million, Renaud says the agency's governing council will
nevertheless be faced with a series of very difficult choices.

In the face of spiralling demand for basic grants, "it will take
$10-million just to maintain our 40 per cent success rate in the standard
grants program and fellowships program," Renaud said.

"But there's no way we can deliver on all of the funds we promised because
we needed the $40-million (which was requested) to do that," Renaud added.

Renaud noted it will be "impossible" to conduct another CURAS competition
on the scale of the one held last year, which saw 22 new centres created.
But Renaud said he's hopeful Council will agree to open at least a few new
centres.

But SSHRC will have to curb its plans to spend something on the order of
$12-million-$15-million to create a Canadian Institute for Social
Statistics, Renaud added. "We also won't be able to develop as many
strategic topics as we thought we would. Strategic research is very
important because it galvanizes energy around topics that have major
societal importance. But we may have to give up one theme." (SSHRC is
currently conducting a strategic grants competition in the areas of  social
cohesion; the challenges and opportunities of a knowledge-based economy;
and society, culture and the health of Canadians'.)

Despite the setbacks, Renaud added that some solace can be found in the
fact that the social sciences and humanities community stands to be a major
beneficiary under the Canadian Institutes of Health Research initiative
(see Perspectives, Vol. 2, No. 6).

In bolstering funding for health research, the CIHR will promote
interdisciplinary projects with researchers in the social sciences and
humanities, Renaud said. "That will be millions of dollars. It won't be
through SSHRC. It will be through the CIHR. But so what?"

Renaud also noted SSHRC will have to more closely examine means of
generating alternative sources of funding. "We have to find a way to
mobilize the private sector and the voluntary sector much better on behalf
of the social sciences and humanities. And that's going to be one of my
priorities next year is  explain, explain, explain' to these people what
we're doing and why we're doing it, why it counts and why it's important
for us to try and get their support."

THE CFI WINDFALL
CFI officials weren't popping champagne corks over Martin's announcement
that the foundation will receive an additional $900-million to top up the
$1-billion endowment it has already obtained to re-invigorate university
labs.  But they did order a modest celebratory cake.

"It's a real vote of confidence in what we're doing," president Dr. David
Strangway said.

With some 400 applications valued at $900-million having been submitted in
the current, ongoing competition for CFI funding, there's obvious evidence
of pent-up demand for infrastructure grants, Strangway noted.

But that will abate to some extent over the next few years, so the CFI will
have to "begin to look a little bit at more strategic direction, that this
is less a catch-up problem than it is making sure that we have the right
tools for people."

To that end, Strangway said the CFI will undertake a round of consultations
this year with the university community, all levels of government, and the
private sector in industries like biotechnology and information technology
to determine areas in which strategic competitions might be held.

"The challenge for us is to come up with a framework that extracts
(priorities) out of the institutions," Strangeway noted.

To a degree, that process will be facilitated by the budget directive that
the CFI be integrally involved in the selection process of the 21st century
research chairs program. Ottawa's intention is clearly is to link the
chairs program with university strategic plans, much as the infrastructure
program compelled universities to sketch their priorities.

"When the universities, within their research plans, come forward with
proposals or plans, we will enter into a parallel dialogue with them,"
Strangway says. "We will be involved in the research chairs and the
selection process, or the ratification process. But we also be involved in
making our capital available" to ensure that the holders of the new chairs
are adequately equipped for the job.

Strangway also noted the CFI is considering setting aside $100-million to
establish an international dimension in its programming.

Under such an international joint ventures initiative, the CFI might be
able to support "bilateral facilities" established in conjunction with
foreign nations or consortiums of researchers in such fields as
biotechnology and information technology, Strangway said.

At this point, the CFI hasn't ruled out the possibility of contributions to
costly international high-energy physics projects, Strangway noted. But he
stressed that "our money is spent at home."

RESEARCH CHAIRS
Although the kinks haven't yet been ironed out of the new chairs program,
the social sciences and humanities remain on track to receive some 20 per
cent or 400 of the 2,000 new research chairs to be created over the next
five years. That will include 80 chairs in the current fiscal year.

"We haven't finalized the allocation approach yet," Manley says. "But I
think it's fair to predict that (the social sciences and humanities) will
get a higher allocation than has been their historical percentage of
granting council funding."

Sources also say SSHRC is also the front-runner to become the agency
responsible for administrative management of the program.

GENOME CANADA
Some $160-million will issue to the not-for-profit corporation called
Genome Canada to implement a national genomics strategy under which five
genome science centres will be created in five specified regions of the
country: Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies and British Columbia.

Although proponents had originally envisioned a system under which the
centres would be created by  platform', such as gene mapping or ethical
considerations, Genome Canada acting president Dr. Martin Godbout says a
decision has since been taken to organize the centres by industrial sectors
such as agriculture, health, fisheries, biopharmaceuticals or forestry.

However, the budget explicitly states that each centre must support
"research into the social, ethical and legal issues related to genomic
science" so social scientists and humanists will be expected to be part of
the networks or consortia that emerge in each region of the country.

With the provinces projected to at least match the federal contribution,
Godbout says the intention is to fund centres to the tune of $10-20-million
annually for a period of 4-5 years.

Equating the initiative to early investments in information technology
which ultimately led to the Internet and e-commerce, Medical Research
Council director of business development Dr. Marc LePage says the Genome
Canada is a necessary investment in one of the technology platforms of the
future. "We're taking a big step here to make sure we're driving, instead
of being driven."

OTHER RESEARCH MEASURES
-Under the rubric of its $700-million/3-year plan to promote environmental
technologies and practices, Ottawa will spend $60-million to create a
Canadian Foundation for Climate & Atmospheric Sciences. Federal officials
say the initiative, which will be managed by the Canadian Meteorological
and Oceanographic Society, is so embryonic it's too early to say exactly
what form it will take, although the intention is to provide peer-reviewed
grants to researchers connected with some manner of network linking
researchers in universities with their counterparts in "climate science
institutes."

-The National Archives of Canada, the National Library of Canada and
 related institutions' will receive $20-million this year, $25-million in
2001-02 and $30-million in 2002-03 to digitize collections and exhibitions
so that they are accessible on the Internet. The monies will also be used
to create a virtual museum linking collections and exhibits from some 1,000
museums.

-As part of Industry Canada's  connectedness agenda', Ottawa will spend
$160-million/two years to design and launch a new Internet look for the
government of Canada. Finance officials said in the budget lock-up that the
focus will be placed squarely on research and development of "secure
channels for electronic commerce."

-For the second year in a row, the budget delivered a huge body blow to the
National Research Council's bid for funding to restore budget cuts levelled
during Ottawa's deficit-busting budgets of the late 1990s.

Shell-shocked NRC president Dr. Arthur Carty was practically apoplectic at
the government's indifference to the agency's fate in what was tagged as an
 innovation' budget. "I'm quite distressed and disappointed. Can we
actually continue to do something with nothing?"

The NRC is left pondering a series of equally unpalatable options,
including closing one of its research institutes; across-the-board cuts; or
even withdrawal of NRC contributions from such national projects as the
Canadian Light Source synchrotron at the University of Saskatchewan; the
national fuel cells initiative; or the neutron program for materials research.

-In a post-budget research announcement, Manley freed-up $200-million/five
years for ongoing operational support at the Tri-University Meson Facility
(TRIUMF) and a capital upgrade of its nearly-constructed Isotope Separator
& Accelerator to 6.5 Million electron Volts (MeV) from 1.5 MeV so as to
provide physicists with even more energy with which to crash together
subatomic particles.

"This will allow us to do what you might call  real' nuclear physics,"
TRIUMF director Dr. Alan Astbury says. TRIUMF will also funnel another
$15-million --in the form of Canadian-built components-- into the  Large
Hadron Collider being built in Switzerland.


Editor:
Wayne Kondro is a freelance writer based in Ottawa.  The former Editor of
the "Science Bulletin", an independent newsletter on national S&T policy,
he is currently a regular contributor to such publications as "Science" and
"The Lancet".