Research In Canada

Canada's research scientists for the most part are furiously condemnatory about the government's decision to turn the National Research Council, a venerable research institution whose past work has served as a source of pride to all Canadians in the universal respect it has enjoyed internationally, into an basically applied-research institution. It might well be that as a result of the backlash the announcement by Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology engendered, of the new direction for the NRC, an adjustment might yet occur, whereby a pure research capability may yet be retained, while the major focus switches to applied research, to still the critics' voices.

Nothing will do that entirely. This Conservative-led government will still experience venom-tipped arrows of fury shot from the well-stocked quivers of those who abhor the 'ideological bias' of the Conservatives, and this particular prime minister. A man whose cited lack of respect for academia and science has been faulted by all those who love to rail against his decisions. Some of which are truly unfortunate and appear short-sighted to say the least.

The former research director of the Science Council of Canada states in his objection to the change in direction at the NRC: "Those firms interested in innovation, and there are a limited number, can access a variety of industrial research programs at both the federal and provincial levels. These include the popular Industrial Research Assistance Program and the $3.5-billion Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Incentive Program. Firms can access such programs directly without having to interface with a government research agency, such as NRC, whose culture is not particularly industrially oriented."

On the other hand, how true is that? Twenty, thirty years ago, trade missions led by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade took along with them NRC metallurgists and university scientists among others, to international destinations to show off Canada's technological breakthroughs in industrial-application new metals and other new-age materials. And, truth be known, when the National Research Council was created in 1916 its purpose was to support applied research, technology transfer and business development.

It was after the Second World War that basic research became a greater focus, and work useful to industry became less of a priority. Likely following the lead of the United States in its research focus. The great theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, forced to flee Nazi Germany, settled at Oxford, England, then travelled on to the United States and ultimately joined a special Princeton pure science institute, richly funded and set aside as the workplace for 18 brilliant scientists whose only obligation was the nominal one of being in residence from October until the end of April -- and thinking, thinking, thinking.

These men of science, Albert Einstein principal among them, were valued for the brilliance of their minds and their conceptual theoretical abilities, and the institute was set up to give them the time and the leisure to allow their minds to ripen ideas that would result in new pure scientific breakthroughs. That golden time of a nation's boundless wealth streamlined toward the luxury of patience in encouraging pure science to develop a brave new world seems long past. The world is far more focused on technological breakthroughs and their industrial payback, the spine of a nation's wealth.

Limitless funding pumped into basic research at universities and government laboratories, in the expectation that industry itself would commit, in its own self-interest to investing in the applied research that would help it expand its horizons through industrial and transnational work to be commercial successes in manufacturing and bringing employment and wealth to the country has lapsed, of late. Industry in Canada has not been investing as it should in its own applied research programs. Canadian industry ranks 19th in business R&D as their share of GDP among nations examined, investing at about half the rate of German industries.

Technologically advanced countries who indulged in pure research discovered soon enough that other less technologically advanced nations were quick to take advantage of those pure research findings and apply their own use for them,transformed into commercially viable products. By-passing the time-consuming, costly investment in the basic research that led inevitably to commercial applications -- countries like China took advantage of the research they themselves did not commit to, to use it to their commercial advantage with cheaper-produced products flooding the marketplace.

Leap-frogging from expensive research to industrial espionage that would allow them to take the fruits of that research and transform it into quickly turned around industrial applications, manufactured by a vast army of low-paid workers. Enabling the country to become the industrial and trade titan it has become. Sucking manufacturing and the jobs that go with it from the countries whose research led to this transformative global turnabout.

Canadian manufacturing has suffered as a result of its own industries failing to commit to the degree of R&D it should. The Organization of Economic Co-Operation and Development found that Canada lost much of its manufacturing base from 2000 to 2010 as a result of this kind of failing. At a rate far greater than any other advanced nation. Venture capital funding for Canadian technology startups is seen at a 16-year low, according to a 2011 study by Price Waterhouse Coopers. This represents a severe competitiveness challenge: solution - higher rates of industrial innovation and productivity.

Canada is by no means the only technologically advanced nation to develop government supported industry-university, public-private partnerships in applied research activities. The United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan and Japan have created new economic stimulus packages worth billions to promote university-industry collaboration in industrially relevant research initiatives. The United States is now considering the very same thing, in a National Network of Manufacturing Innovation initiative.

The focus is to succeed in creating innovation-centric organization with the Canadian government connecting basic university research with an eye to applications in industry, and to advance tech entrepreneurship, and promote development of research hubs focused on key industry sectors. The focus is quite in line with the more structured emphasis of the federal government on industrial production and trade opportunities, initiatives that began long before this government came on the scene, going back in fact to the Trudeau era, when then-External Affairs was weighted with international trade.