Editorial - 21-20

The current federal government should be commended for its support of the new Industrial R&D Internships program which will eventually place 1,000 students annually in a corporate setting to conduct focused, industrially relevant R&D. Indeed the Harper administration has performed credibly when investing in university-based research.

Although much of the critical spadework was done under the previous Liberal administration, the government had the good sense to maintain important policy thrusts and programs, albeit with its own distinctive spin.

It's a different story when it comes to government R&D. As the latest Statistics Canada data clearly demonstrate, overall support for federal research is gradually shrinking (see page 5). With the exception of a couple of key agencies, program review-related cuts that began under the Liberals continue to eat away at the R&D capacity of the major science-based departments and agencies (SBDAs).

The best efforts of the SBDAs to chart a different course have been met with indifference, with numerous proposals for restructuring falling on deaf ears.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the fate of the last report from the Council of Science and Technology Advisors (CSTA) (see page 3). Completed in early 2006, its call for a major restructuring and heightened profile for federal S&T was never been released.

Whether this failure to heed pertinent advice is due to benign neglect or craven politics is besides the point. A group of respected Canadians offered their advice and they have been ignored.