Perspectives (Volume 4, number 4) - National Consultations to be held on Innovation White Paper (fwd)

[Richard Plant]

Hello All:

here is the latest "Perspectives" from HSSFC.

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

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Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:54:06 -0400
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Subject: Perspectives (Volume 4,
     number 4) - National Consultations to  be held on Innovation White Paper

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/english/policyandadvocacy/perspectives/perspectives.html
Please address your comments and suggestions to Jacqueline Wright,
Executive Assistant, at: jawright at hssfc.ca.

PERSPECTIVES (Volume 4, Number 4)
July 12, 2001

Editor: Wayne Kondro

Table of contents:

1)      National Consultations to be Held on Innovation White Paper
2)      The White Paper
3)      The SSHRC Budget
4)      The Institutional Divide
5)      Indirect Research Costs
6)      Commercialization of University Research
7)      Priority Setting
8)      Tobin's priorities
9)      The Initiative on the New Economy

1) National Consultations to be Held on Innovation White Paper
Industry minister argues for greater specialization among universities

Brace yourself for the "great national debate."

Federal Industry minister Brian Tobin says he's planning a one-year
nation-wide exercise to reach a consensus on appropriate federal policies
and investments needed to achieve the government's goal of making Canada
the most innovative country in the world.

The forthcoming federal white paper on innovation – now scheduled to be
released this fall – will be subject to the scrutiny of participants in a
series of regional forums before its final parameters take shape at a
national summit on innovation in the fall of the year 2002, Tobin says.

"As minister of Industry, I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say: we're not
going far enough, we as a federal government, and we're not going fast
enough and we can't do it if we attempt to move this agenda alone. We need
to have a buy-in from the provincial governments, the private sector and
our academic institutions. One of the ways we do that is to engender a
great national debate."

Among the issues to be determined over the course of the exercise: whether
more funding should be provided for social sciences & humanities research,
and whether measures are needed to help smaller universities compete for
research grants.

2) The White Paper
It has been flogged as a blueprint by which the Liberal government will
achieve its stated objectives of lifting Canada to at least 5th from 16th
place in the OECD rankings of per capita R&D performers, while doubling R&D
investment by the year 2010.

Its production has been couched in the rhetoric of dire national need so as
to reverse falling productivity rates and a plummeting standard of living.

It was once slated for completion in June but the release of the
forthcoming federal white paper on innovation was recently delayed until
the fall after the federal cabinet sent its framers back to the drawing
board with orders to craft something a bit more substantive.

Industry minister Brian Tobin says the blueprint will be submitted to a
series of regional forums for consideration before a national summit of
researchers, businessmen and government officials is convened to iron out
the final kinks in the plan.

Tobin began campaigning early for a shift in national S&T consciousness
during a brief interview about his research priorities. "My view is that
we've done a lot of things right in this country but there are a couple of
revolutions that we still need."

"We need a revolution between our own ears to expose, to a greater number
of Canadians, some of the advances we've made in various R&D, in S&T, to
create new knowledge and commercialization of that knowledge. And we need
to give our innovative leaders, whether they come from the private sector
or whether they come from the public sector or they come from our best
laboratories in this country, an opportunity to showcase their know-how and
their skills."

"The federal government can't make Canada the most innovative country in
the world," Tobin added. "It's going to take more than the power, the might
and the influence of the federal government to create the kind of cultural
shift, or the culture of innovation, that we're talking about."

"It's going to take a buy-in from provincial governments, from our
universities and very importantly, from our private sector. …There has to
be some consensus items around which we can all work and all get behind if
Canada is to have a sustainable policy of re-investment in R&D."

Tobin declined to delve into any specifics regarding the evolving
blueprint, other than to say that it is "well-advanced." But federal
sources say the plan now focuses on measures to promote more
commercialization of technologies, particularly in the universities, as
well on investments aimed at providing high-speed broadband Internet access
to all Canadians. (A federal task force recently projected it would cost
between $2-billion and $4.5-billion to deliver the government's campaign
promise to provide nation-wide broadband Internet access by the year 2004).

3) The SSHRC budget
Although Parliament's Industry committee recently asserted in a report
entitled "A Canadian Innovation Agenda for the 21st Century" that the
government has made a commitment to "double SSHRC's appropriations to
$400-million" in order to make a "good start at redressing the apparent
inequity among the granting councils," Tobin said cabinet has not actually
made a decision to as whether the agency warrants a substantial budget
increase.

The Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, and its sister agencies
the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council and the Canadian
Institutes of Health Research, have all pitched for a doubling of their
budgets, arguing that they desperately need more monies to address
skyrocketing demand prompted by an influx of younger professors and
pressures resulting from infrastructure investments made by the Canada
Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

SSHRC president Dr. Marc Renaud also argues that the social sciences &
humanities are in line for a further increase because their traditional
share (12%) of federal granting council pie is disproportionate to the size
of the community (55% of faculty).

Renaud also contends the social sciences and humanities are now effectively
"subsidizing" the natural and biomedical sciences because tuition fees
garnered from their disciplines are being used to meet matching dollar
requirements under targeted federal and provincial programs, (see
Perspectives, Vol. 4,  No.8).

But it's premature to say whether SSHRC warrants special consideration,
although all the councils are in line for a measure of relief, Tobin said.

"We've said we're going to double our investment in R&D. It's a pretty safe
bet that over a period of time that that will result in all of the granting
councils being in substantially improved positions in terms of their
budgets. Can we expect to see a doubling of budgets everywhere? That's more
than I can say at this stage of the game."

However, Tobin acknowledged that there is a "disparity" in SSHRC's budget,
relative to the size of the community it serves. He also affirmed that the
formula of proportional equity that has traditionally been used to
determine each council's share of the pie is under departmental review.

The formula will be on the table during the national consultations on the
innovation white paper, Tobin said. "There'll be an opportunity for the
scientific community to come forward and the university community and the
private sector and provincial governments to express their views of where
the government priorities should be and where their own priorities are."

4) The Institutional Divide
Tobin also indicated that the national consultations will provide the
academic community with an opportunity to address concerns about the
institutional divide that is rapidly emerging between have and have-not
universities.

For years, the federal government has advanced programs and policies aimed
at promoting greater specialization and differentiation among universities,
largely on the grounds that the research enterprise has become too
expensive to sustain equally within all institutions and that its nature
has evolved to the point where only larger institutions have the critical
mass to actually make significant contributions at science's leading edge.

 To that end, the government has argued that programs like the CFI, the
Canada Research Chairs and various other matching grant initiatives should
nudge small and medium-sized universities into identifying niches in which
they can be competitive.

But concerns are now being raised that the pendulum has now swung too far.
There is growing regional disparity in the success rate of universities in
granting council competitions and considerable fear that Canada will soon
be left with only two tiers of institutions: big research intensive
universities or smaller teaching institutions.

Similarly, there's an emerging sense of divide between the social sciences
& humanities and their counterparts in the natural and biomedical sciences
as universities have moved to funnel available tuition, endowment and
operating monies into hard sciences to meet matching dollar requirements
under federal and provincial programs.

While acknowledging a possible need for measures to address capacity
building within smaller and regional universities, Tobin staunchly defended
the precepts of greater differentiation amongst universities.

It would be a "mistake" to make research granting decisions on the basis of
regional or capacity considerations rather than excellence because that
would compromise peer review, Tobin argued, adding that it would be unwise
to tell a granting council, "that we want you to dumb down your standards
to ensure regional equity and sharing, even when capacity is not right."

It would be equally erroneous for universities in Atlantic Canada, for
example, to duplicate "every skill set of every other university. I mean,
it's silly for Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and P.E.I. to
all try to replicate every discipline in every school. We should recognize
that some schools will build a level of expertise that will be the
vanguard, if you want, or the relevant institution for the region in
Atlantic Canada. We should recognize, as well, that Atlantic universities
might build capacity quicker if we try and get those institutions to work
together."

"We as a country can't afford the notion that every university is going to
have support, in equal measure, for every discipline. It just isn't on.
There isn't enough money in Canada," Tobin added.
"However, we can help build capacity in those areas that ought to be
niches, that out to be areas of expertise, for regional institutions."

It has been argued that disparities might be addressed through additional
support for smaller universities under a federal program to cover indirect
research costs or through such mechanisms as a designated program for
research infrastructure in the social sciences & humanities.

But Tobin said cabinet hasn't yet determined whether specific measures are
even necessary to address the institutional divide, let alone what those
measures might be. "But it is a concern of several cabinet ministers."

5) Indirect Research Costs
Tobin also said that no decision has been made on whether to proceed with a
program to support indirect research costs at universities, (see
Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 16).

But federal sources say the Liberal government has already determined it
will move with a program, likely as part of the white paper exercise.

Will it be as much as $1-billion?

"They haven't pegged a dollar figure yet," one official says.  But there is
a growing consensus that the monies should be provided as a fixed
percentage of each research grant, on the order of 40%, he adds. "They're
looking at scaling that up for smaller universities, to help them overcome
the hump. They can't afford to get into the research game because they just
can't afford to pay for indirect costs. This would give them a bit of a
break."

6) Commercialization of University Research
While declining extensive comment, Tobin did confirm that measures to
bolster the commercialization of university research remain "very much a
part of the discussions that are feeding into the white paper."

Parliament's industry committee and the federal Advisory Council on Science
& Technology's Expert Panel on Commercialization of University Research
have both recommended that the federal and provincial governments move to
standardize intellectual property policies in the nation's universities.
They urge that all intellectual property resulting from federally supported
research must be disclosed to, and owned by, the university, unless
assigned otherwise under defined conditions, (see Perspectives, Vol 2, No. 8).

The industry committee also recently concurred with the S&T advisory
council that Ottawa should invest $45-million/year to bolster and expand
university business development offices; university-industry liaison
offices and technology transfer offices to make them more capable of
identifying discoveries and flogging them to the private
sector.

Associations ranging from the Humanities & Social Sciences Federation of
Canada to the Canadian Association of University Teachers have raised
concerns that such policies will only serve to compromise the research and
teaching functions of universities.

But there's little evidence that the government is considering an
alternative approach, such as asking the National Research Council, which
has far more expertise in spinning-off or incubating discoveries, to
establish commercialization offices on each campus across the country.

"No one has even thought about that possibility," says one science
mandarin. "I'm not sure that the universities would find that any more
palatable."

7) Priority setting
With Ottawa all but awash in mega-dollar research proposals – including
granting council hikes; implementation of a long-range astronomy plan;
creation of a massive new public database on protein interactions;
rejuvenating information technology departments in universities through
targeted research in microelectronics, photonics, opto-electronics,
wireless and radio-electronics; and even a blue-sky Canadian Space Agency
scheme to launch a mission to Mars – the Parliamentary industry committee
again pitched structural changes in federal science management and
decision-making regimes.

The industry committee urged that the science portfolio be made a full
cabinet portfolio, that a chief scientist for the nation be appointed, and
that the federal government establish a "definitive advisory process" to
determine priorities among big science projects.

But Tobin indicated he believes matters are best left in the hands of his
cabinet colleagues. "It's the responsibility of the federal cabinet to make
priority decisions."

8) Tobin's priorities
He's been called Captain Canada for organizing the flag-waving rally in
Montreal on eve of Quebec's last referendum on sovereignty. And as the
former minister of fisheries, he'll be forever remembered for his high-seas
showdown with Spanish trawlers, in which stood on the steps of the United
Nations and proclaimed the demise of the "last, lonely, unloved,
unattractive little turbot, clinging by its fingernails to the Grand Banks
of Newfoundland, saying: ‘someone, reach out and save me in this eleventh
hour as I'm about to go down to extinction'."

So what imprimatur does Tobin ultimately hope to leave on the Industry
portfolio?
"I would hope that we could frankly give Canadians a greater sense of
excitement about Canada, about our S&T capabilities, about our incredible
capacity for R&D," he says.

"Obviously, there are two revolutions needed. One is to change the way we
see ourselves. And secondly, changing the way that others see us. We wonder
why the rest of the planet doesn't recognize the accomplishments we've had
in S&T. Frankly, it's because we haven't celebrated them enough ourselves.
I'd like to help shine a light on some of the incredibly bright and
brilliant and important women and men in the area of S&T that are making
the country a leader."

9) The Initiative on the New Economy
Earlier, Tobin officially unveiled the parameters of the new $100-million,
five-year SSHRC-administered Initiative on the New Economy, which will
offer grants in four areas: new economy issues, management, education and
lifelong learning, (see Perspectives, Vol. 4. No. 8).

Under the program, all applications will be subjected to a relevance test
before moving on to standard peer review.

SSHRC executive vice-president Dr. Janet Halliwell told reporters the
relevance committee will be applying a "subjective" test to determine
whether the proposals "actually bring us closer to the objectives of the
program."

Applicants will be asked to make a two-page pitch as to how their research
fits within the parameters of the program. Those that fail to make the
grade will be funnelled to standard research grant competitions.

The program will offer investigator-initiated grants, as well as allow
universities to apply for as much as $750,000 over three years to create
new research institutes in such areas as tele-learning, business innovation
or the societal impact of globalization.

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".