Time for a Canada Foundation for Research

By Dr Peter Morand

Recent federal government support for university research reflects a much-improved appreciation by politicians of the benefits to society that accrue from investment in the advancement of knowledge. But, in the early and mid ‘90s, when Canada’s deficit was at an all-time high and the national debt was pushing the country towards the brink of an economic abyss, the national granting agencies experienced a harrowing cycle of retrenchments and cutbacks. It was during that same period that the government abolished the Science Council and announced the proposed merger of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) with the Canada Council (now the Canada Council for the Arts).

The latter announcement came as a complete surprise to Paule Leduc who was then president of SSHRC– more so in light of the rapprochement that had been going on for some time between SSHRC and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). The two councils were located in the same building, a joint program had been established and plans were well underway to merge the administrative services of both councils. At the time, Paule and I wondered if those who had advised the government to implement this ill-fated measure (the legislation was defeated at the last moment when presented to Senate) were even aware that SSHRC had been split off from the Canada Council in 1977.

Which brings us to the present. While for years health sciences and science and engineering research granting agencies in other countries have had a strong symbiosis with the social sciences, Canada has been slow in creating effective mechanisms to achieve this kind of mutually beneficial relationship.

Both François Kourilsky, the former head of France’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and Neal Lane, former director of the US’s National Science Foundation (NSF) and subsequently advisor to president Bill Clinton for Science and Technology, are fervent advocates of a seamless interface with the social sciences.

Until relatively recently, the specific application of new knowledge and its subsequent impact on society took many decades. A case in point is James Clerk Maxwell’s publication of his ‘wave equations’ in 1873, based on his observation that the speed of propagation of an electromagnetic field is approximately that of the speed of light.

Twenty-one years later, Guglielmo Marconi applied these equations to invent a way to send messages through the air, the birth of wireless technology. However, it was not until well into the 20th century that, first radios, and then television sets were available globally, changing forever the way society functions.

Harvard’s Clayton Christensen coined the concept of ‘disruptive technology’ in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma (1997) and subsequently refined the term to ‘disruptive innovation’ because he recognized that few technologies are intrinsically disruptive or sustaining in character. There are some who question Christensen’s concept of disruptive technology/innovation and choice of examples. The fact remains that in the last 20 years we have witnessed a dramatic acceleration in the speed with which certain ideas and discoveries are transformed into technologies that have affected the everyday lives of people the world over.

CONVERGENCE OF DISCIPLINES ACCELERATING

Personal computers, cell phones, browser search engines, high speed broadband data transmission, genetic engineering and organ transplants are but a few of the applications that have had an immense impact on society. James Burke, in his excellent PBS TV series Connections, points out that true disruption occurs when the application of new ideas and inventions coincides with regulatory and social change, complementary technologies and demand.

What have we been doing in Canada to adapt our public policies for research support to account for these increasingly frequent disruptions to the way we function as a society? Henry Friesen’s vision in the transformation of the former Medical Research Council into the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) was a step in the right direction. CIHR, with its regional nodes and sectoral research institutes, has resulted in a much closer interface between the health sciences and the social sciences.

Except for its participation in the Networks of Centres of Excellence program and a few public education initiatives, the same cannot be said of NSERC. Since a new president has just been appointed for NSERC and since SSHRC is in the process of appointing one, this may be the time to consider the integration of NSERC with the social sciences component of SSHRC.

NOT A QUESTION OF ‘IF’ BUT ‘WHEN’

This new entity could be called, for example, the Canada Foundation for Research. At the same time the Canada Council for the Arts could expand its mandate to include the humanities and could possibly be reconstituted as the Canada Foundation for the Arts and the Humanities. Such a realignment of the federal research granting agencies would keep Canada current with the times.

Should a policy decision be taken to integrate federal support for engineering and the natural and social sciences it will be necessary to have a defined period of extensive consultations with the university research community and other stakeholders.

More than anything else, and as was the case in the transformation of MRC into CIHR, it will be essential for a champion to emerge to guide the process and to ensure that the creation of a Canada Foundation for Research benefits not only the researchers themselves but all Canadians. To me it is not a question of whether or not this repositioning should happen; it is a question of when it will happen.

In the words of George E. Brown, who served as chair of the Science Committee of the US House of Representatives and who was a longtime supporter of scientific research until his death in 1999, “Progress is meaningless if we don’t know where we’re going. Unless we try to visualize what is beyond the horizon, we will always occupy the same shore”.

Dr Peter Morand was president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada during a period of oppressive cuts to Canada’s university research infrastructure by the federal government (1990-95).