CFI details plans to invest remaining $820M; begins process for renewal and new funding

By Debbie Lawes

Treasury Board will decide soon whether to approve a new “program architecture” for the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) that includes hundreds of millions of dollars for national research platforms, new infrastructure, equipment upgrades and the retention and recruitment of university faculty. CFI has about $820.5 million (including interest) remaining of its original $3.65 billion endowment, which is set to sunset in 2010. This month, CFI launched a new consultation process in hopes of securing more federal funding prior to 2010, and beyond.

Industry Canada has already approved the funding agreement for the spending plan, and on June 6 in Charlottetown, CFI’s board of directors gave a final nod to proceed with a call for applications for two programs. The CFI board also approved funding levels for a suite of new and revised programs for 2006-2010.

One of the biggest changes is the division of the mammoth Innovation Fund into two separate programs – the Leading Edge Fund and the New Initiatives Fund. The latter is essentially a continuation of the Innovation Fund, which has handed out $1.77 billion in grants since 1998-99 for new research infrastructure in universities and colleges. Since funding is more limited than in the past, CFI is placing a funding cap on how much each institution can receive.

The Leading Edge Fund is new. It is designed to sustain and enhance existing infrastructure funded through previous CFI competitions, enabling institutions to upgrade equipment or purchase new infrastructure. The two new funds will have a combined budget of $325 million, with winners to be announced in fall 2006. The call for applications will go out immediately following Treasury Board approval, expected early this summer.

“We’ve made over the last seven years these investments in equipment and infrastructure. We need to begin paying attention to how we’re going to sustain and protect those investments by keeping them state-of-the-art. That’s what the Leading Edge Fund is for,” CFI president/CEO Dr. Eliot Phillipson told RE$EARCH MONEY, adding that the new fund will also help to move research projects to the next level.

The proposed changes follow a year of extensive consultation with research institutions, funding agencies and governments to identify priorities for CFI’s remaining funds. The process identified six top priorities, including sustaining existing infrastructure, faculty retention and international competitiveness (see box).

Another new program is the National Platforms Fund, which will provide up to $60 million for generic research infrastructure, resources, services and facilities that can benefit several institutions, disciplines and research projects. One of the top priorities will likely be high performance computing (HPC), which would build on the $240 million in public money that this sector has already received over the past four years. The HPC community recently released a Long Range Plan (www.c3.ca) calling for a long-term funding envelop to provide “sustained support for regional HPC consortia, providing mid-range advanced HPC facilities”, and the establishment of a pan-Canad-ian tera-scale HPC facility.

Another potential funding recipient would be the University of Montreal-led SYNERGIES program, which is creating a pan-Canadian online information repository for the humanities and social sciences.

CFI EXPANDS NEW OPPORTUNITIES FUND

In the late 1990s, brain drain and recruitment were major concerns at Canadian universities. Today, Phillipson says retainment has become just as important.

“Many of these individuals are now among the leaders in their fields, so they’ve become even greater targets for recruitment by other jurisdictions. They’re not just a potential – now they’re a proven commodity,” he says.

In response, CFI is consolidating its New Opportunities, Canada Research Chairs Infrastructure and Career Awards funds into the Leaders Opportunities Fund, which will provide infrastructure support to established researchers at an institution, not only new recruits. Over the next five years, the new program will disperse $338 million and increase the amount each institution can receive.

Under the new program structure, CFI plans to maintain the Infrastructure Operating Fund with a funding envelop of up to $183 million. This fund tops up infrastructure awards with an additional 30 per cent to cover incremental operating and maintenance costs associated with CFI-funded projects. The $500-million Research Hospital Fund is also not effected by the changes.

In May, CFI announced a final competition for its International Joint Ventures program, which will allocate $35 million to one project, in collaboration with the three granting councils and Genome Canada. The international fund has already invested about $165 million in nine projects since 2002 to help Canadian institutions lead and participate in major, multinational research projects. Bidders will be invited to submit full applications by March 2006.

BEYOND 2010?

As CFI nears the end of its mandate in 2010, money is quickly running out. Since its inception in 1998, CFI has awarded about $400 million annually. That amount will drop to about $200 annually for the next five years.

This month, CFI began consulting with stakeholders to determine where future infrastructure investments should be made, assuming CFI is successful in securing new federal money prior to 2010 and beyond. Phillipson says they hope to have these ideas clearly defined by the end of the year.

However, he acknowledges that it’s unlikely that Canada – or most other countries – will be able to sustain the high levels of S&T investment made over the past decade. “At some point it has to plateau, and the question I get asked most frequently is, ‘what is the level of investment we need to maintain so that Canada remains competitive?,’” Phillipson told a Toronto conference hosted by the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network June 13.

One suggestion is for Canada to identify sectors where it can lead internationally, and for various funding agencies to take a coordinated approach to investing in these areas. “We’ve always been afraid, I think, to even entertain the discussion of identifying some priorities,” Phillipson said in Toronto. “Other countries are doing this … and I think if Canada doesn’t do it, then we may not end up with any areas in which we truly are the international leaders. It’s something that the (CFI) board agrees need to be discussed.”

Commercialization of R&D will also be part of the new consultation process, with an emphasis on developing university research to stage where it can be more easily handed off to industry. Phillipson says this could include investing in infrastructure that “will foster meaningful university/college-industry partnerships” that are in the private sector’s field of interest.

“The infrastructure could be within the university or college, or if everybody thinks it makes more sense, it could be in the private sector partner’s shop (but still owned by the university),” he told conference delegates. “I think this is something that would also appeal to provincial governments because it can go with their regional priorities and strengths and therefore we would probably have less difficulty finding the matching funds.”

R$