NRC working with new strategic plan to develop proposal for next Budget cycle

Focus on the National Research Council

The National Research Council (NRC) is floating a new concept for increased A-base funding that could see some of its time-limited cluster initiatives gain permanent status as it develops a detailed business plan for consideration in the next federal Budget. Armed with a new five-year strategic plan, the new approach to cluster funding is being advanced as part of a multi-faceted proposal for additional support in selected areas where NRC contends it can boost industrial competitiveness and contribute to national priorities such as energy, environment and health and wellness.

Also included will be a so-called single gateway model to help firms navigate the agency for the technology expertise they require, new horizontal programs in areas such as sustainable energy and a new life science-focused institute in the Toronto area that will likely be a synthesis of two that were previously proposed for biomedical innovation and convergent technologies (R$, December 22/05).

"We have to make a sound case to show government that the programs we are proposing make sense and will be translated into concrete results for Canadian industry, for the government of Canada and by collaborating universities and creating highly qualified people," says NRC president Dr Pierre Coulombe. "Three years down the line, I would like the NRC to be seen as the public research organization in Canada that you can count on if you have a problem ... To be valued as the world's best national organization for research and innovation."

The latest NRC strategy - Science at Work for Canada - is a high-level approach to refocusing the 90-year organization that began shortly before Coulombe's arrival last year. It finds the NRC with a constrained, fractured funding base that is making it increasingly difficult to address new and emerging areas of technology, maintain its core function of developing and exploiting research emanating from its institutes and fulfill international obligations.

The situation became so acute earlier this year that the NRC was compelled to approach Treasury Board for a return of funds that were withheld during the transition to the new government. The successful conclusion of those negotiations gave NRC some breathing room to address a shortfall of nearly $40 million and determine where it should place existing resources as a result of the recently concluded renewal exercise led by Dr Sherif Barakat.

The renewal exercise is the result of several extensive consultations and data analysis focused on four central themes: global context, global challenges impacting Canada, global economic competition and the evolving role of S&T (R$, January 24/06). Now entering the implementation phase, the renewal exercise forms the core of the new strategic plan. Many of its recommendations - a sharper research focus, coordination with other players in the innovation chain and leveraging of university research expertise and infrastructure - will be completed with NRC's current fiscal resources.

NRC hopes that the strategy and accompanying business plan will demonstrate impact and convince the central agencies that many recent initiatives supported through sunset funding should be considered within an expanded A-base.

Two cases in point are the National Institute of Nanotechnology and the Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre (see page 4). Both were recently launched with a five-year commitment for operational funding that must soon be renewed. NRC hopes that by demonstrating high impact and long-term viability, they can be moved to the permanent side of the funding ledger.

Others components of the strategy will require additional resources, the most prominent being a life sciences-based institute for the Toronto area. A coalition of research organizations in the region have been lobbying hard to convince NRC of the importance of establishing an institute there - the only major urban area with no NRC presence.

"The TRRA is quite excited that the proposal appears to have a serious future," says Walter Stewart, the Toronto Region Research Alliance's senior advisor on research capacity building. "It would put some federal engagement in the region and could be prototypical for next-generation NRC."

A Toronto-based institute focusing on convergent biomedical applications would give the NRC a greater foothold in the life sciences field and the potential for collaboration with area partners that receive hundreds of million of dollars annually in research funding. NRC's life sciences VP, Dr Roman Szumski, is leading the negotiations and has a wealth of industrial expertise from his previous position as VP science and technology at MDS Inc (R$, June 2/05). Yet without new resources, NRC is simply too cash constrained to move forward.

"We can do a lot by ourselves out of the A base we receive but there are issues within that A base that need to be addressed," says Coulombe. "Toronto for example. There's no way I can move Toronto forward. I don't have the money to do that. So what we will do is tell the story together ... This is what we would like to do, this is the support we have from industry, the universities and the community."

Many of the elements of the NRC's new strategy reflect increasing convergence among research disciplines and technologies. Increased horizontal programs and the single gateway model will allow NRC to tap into in-house expertise more effectively, while leading or contributing to initiatives that are national in scope. The broad themes of environment, health and wellness and energy are a means to enhance the agency's contribution to larger issues while retaining its focus on industry.

"For us to contribute, to provide solutions to these areas, we can contribute research being done at the institutes," says Coulombe. "In the field of energy, for instance, we may be developing a new program on sustainable energy that could capture the expertise of several institutes, that will allocate some resources to this particular horizontal program."

To successfully execute a dual mandate of assisting industry and contributing to national challenges, Coulombe says NRC must maintain a balance of 80% technology development and adaptation in concert with industry and 20% discovery research through collaboration with academia.

"I need to leverage the significant contribution that the federal government has made into university research and connect it with what I have identified as priorities ... We cannot pretend to to have all the knowledge in-house which is necessary to move those areas forward..

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