Details of strategic review reveal extent of cuts to agency research budgets

Granting councils hardest hit

The federal government's strategic review is taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of Canada's public research enterprise despite official claims to the contrary. Budget documents and disclosure by several agencies reveal that the three granting agencies will lose $147.9 million from their budgets over the next three years and remain $87.2 million below current levels each year thereafter. In addition, the indirect costs program will be reduced by $14.7 million over the same three-year period to $314.4 million, maintaining the same relative ratio between direct and indirect costs.

The National Research Council (NRC) will see its budget reduced $27.7 million, necessitating a reduction in its library — the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) — and the elimination of three smaller telecommunications research units.

The government argues that the savings realized through strategic review are being reinvested, but the money first goes back into a general revenue fund before being reallocated.

The granting agencies and NRC did receive new funding in the budget. The granting agencies received a temporary boost to the Canada Graduate Scholarship program while new NRC's funding went to the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) which assists business but does not conduct R&D (R$, February 9/09).

At the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the largest cut was achieved through the elimination of the Open Team Grant program, for a saving of $26.7 million a year by year three. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) will eliminate five small programs while two others are being downsized. NSERC did not provide details of the cuts by press deadline. (All media queries to NSERC and NRC for details of the impact of strategic review were referred to Industry Canada for approval Queries to Industry Canada also went unanswered.)

For CIHR, Health Canada spokesperson Josee Bellemare says the review of CIHR programs was conducted in conjunction with Health Canada and Treasury Board.

It's unclear to what extent the strategic review will impact the S&T activities of the two science-based departments included in this years exercise as no details were provided. Cuts to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Transport Canada total $464.5 million over three years.

The federal Budget's emphasis on research infrastructure at the expense of operating funds has created at uproar across the country and internationally, sparking fears of a renewed brain drain and a reduction in Canada's recently revived scientific reputation on the world stage. Even early supporters of the Budget's R&D and S&T provisions have begun to moderate their tone.

The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) was enthusiastic in its praise of the Budget, particularly the $2 billion in university and college infrastructure spending. But at a February 23 session of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, outgoing AUCC president Claire Morris expressed her disappointment at the cuts to the granting councils. While acknowledging that one Budget can't address all the concerns of the university research community, her assessment of the impact and consequences of strategic review was blunt.

"We share the disappointment of our research community in the reductions of the granting council funds. We must keep pace with the competition given the international context in which our research community operates," stated Morris. "The new U.S. administration has just approved an injection of billions over the next 18 months in its R&D enterprise, including large increases in the amount of funding available to researchers."

Those few bureaucrats willing to address the issue of research cuts prefer to deal in aggregate numbers that show modest increases to their budgets. Dr Suzanne Fortier — NSERC president and the only granting agency head who consented to be interviewed for this article — says her agency's budget increased 18% in the two years after she arrived in 2006, jumping from approximately $850 million to $1 billion.

"That's not bad and this year we are not seeing a decrease or an increase. Staying at $1 billion is very good," says Fortier, adding that periodic reviews of any organization are both necessary and healthy. "We'll try hard for the next Budget. The situation is not catastrophic as we are holding steady." As for the cuts to the agency's base budget, she says the major impact will only be felt in year three and that there are two Budgets between now and then.

Fortier also questions the validity of growing fears throughout the research community of an exodus of research talent to the US, where the new administration of president Barack Obama is pumping billions into government research programs.

"Another brain drain remains to be seen. The US economic situation is very severe and university endowments are hurting the ability of universities to hire. Harvard has placed a freeze on hiring," she says. "(New) US funding is mostly one-time and short-term."

Fortier recently returned from the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago where she learned anecdotally that –— apart from the US — most other advanced nations are investing primarily in S&T infrastructure during the economic downturn.

The strategic review of federal departments and agencies evaluated spending according to four main criteria: impact on the community it serves; federal role and fit with agency/departmental mandate in these programs; alignment with S&T Strategy; and value for money. Each review was conducted by a steering committee and an arm's length advisory committee appointed by the relevant minister.

NRC cuts

At the NRC, some detail on the impact of strategic review was contained in an internal memo circulated by NRC president Dr. Pierre Coulombe. It reveals that CISTI will continue operating "on a smaller scale" and that some of its services may be spun off or delivered in a different way, possibly through a public-private partnership.

NRC projects saving $17.4 over three years through "increasing efficiency and effectiveness." This primarily includes shutting down three smaller Ottawa-based research groups: the Software Engineering and Information Security groups at the Institute for Information Technology, and the Institute for Microstructural Sciences' Acoustics and Signal Processing group. Modest job losses of up to 16 people are expected through attrition and other measures, rather than direct layoffs.

The Software Engineering group focuses primarily on integration and interoperability issues and software development practices, while the Information Security group works on information security for distributed systems. The Acoustics group performs R&D on acoustics for telecommunications and multimedia.

Savings from changes at CISTI are expected to result in $10.3 million in 2011-12. Further details on the changes were not available from NRC by press deadline.

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