Official nod for NRC's Atlantic cluster development raises hopes that rest of strategy will receive funding in next Budget

The National Research Council's emerging technology cluster strategy has received a huge shot in the arm with the official announcement of $110 million over five years in new funding to implement several technology initiatives throughout Atlantic Canada. As part of the much larger Atlantic Investment Partnership announced June 29, the NRC's allocation also serves as an encouraging signal that Ottawa is endorsing the agency's pitch for further cluster development throughout Canada after the disturbing silence of the last federal Budget. News of the new funding for the Atlantic provinces and for an aerospace institute in Montreal and Ottawa was quietly relayed to NRC shortly after the Budget was tabled, and official confirmation of the aerospace cluster based at the Univ of Montreal is still pending, despite being leaked to the Quebec press some weeks ago.

Specifically, the new Atlantic funding will facilitate five initiatives in key centres in all four provinces (see chart) and build upon emerging technology strengths in ocean engineering, life sciences, information technologies and e-commerce. The latter will be the focus of a new New Brunswick-based institute, bringing the total number of official NRC institutes to 18, including the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI).

"The teams have been in place for some months now," says Dr Arthur Carty, alluding to the earlier confirmation of the funding decision. "We've had the directors generals (of the two existing Atlantic-based institutes) and the regional director of IRAP (Industrial Research Assistance Program) chairing committees in each of these regions and developing the background to enable us to implement the initiatives."

Throughout the summer, consultation s will take place with regional players in the government, academic and private sectors to determine how much further funding is forthcoming, and flesh out the concepts for the five initiatives. The e-commerce institute in New Brunswick will be the most expensive venture, followed by the bulking up of the Halifax-based Institute for Marine Biosciences (IMB) and the St John's NFLD-based Institute for Marine Dynamics (IMD). The innovation centres in Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island (PEI) will depend more upon partnership contributions with a focus on the surrounding communities.

At the IMD, resources will be devoted to making St John's the North American leader in ocean engineering with a new incubator for commercialization and an enhancement of their research program with an emphasis on building linkages to small- and medium-sized companies. At Halifax's IMB, a major thrust will be to bolster genomics, as well as emphasizing medical diagnostics. It will be linked to Genome Canada's Atlantic initiative although the details on how the two organizations will interact is the subject of future discussions.

Work on developing implementation plans for these two existing institutes and the new innovation centres are expected to be finalized fairly quickly once a series of round table discussions are convened in September. The e-commerce and information technology institute in New Brunswick will likely take longer, since it has to be built from the ground up, and a locale has yet to be selected. Criteria have been developed for choosing the site and has been shared with provincial authorities. The Ottawa-based Institute for Information Technology will be heavily involved in both the New Brunswick institute and the Cape Breton innovation centre which has information technology as its focus. The PEI innovation centre will be devoted to the life sciences and technology infrastructure development.

Carty is hesitant to acknowledge that the federal government has completely bought into the NRC's strategy of technology clusters and regional and community innovation, but he says he will continue to push to have the complete package funded and implemented, including Western Canada, Ontario and British Columbia.

"There haven't been any indications that this is the first tranche. The positive thing about it is that government is recognizing that this particular program of regional community innovation is a way to delivery the new economy to regions of the country which could benefit from it. It's a new approach and it's based on R&D and innovation," he says. "Of course it is part of an overall initiative so we're hoping the government will follow through with the remaining parts of it. ... We'd obviously like to continue the process and put it in place in other communities - complete the strategy and go to it."

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