Panel's call for dismantling NRC may clash with management's current overhaul

Jenkins Report: NRC

The recommendation by the Jenkins Panel to break up the National Research Council (NRC) could put it on a collision course with NRC management which is overhauling the 96-year-old organization to attract more industry funding for its activities. Details are scarce for both the Panel recommendation and NRC's realignment under president John McDougall. But to some it's increasingly evident that while the two visions are complementary in terms of vision and end objective, they're far less compatible when it comes to governance, organizational structure and implementation.

The Panel is calling for the NRC's 17 existing institutes and business units to be spun off over the next five years as large-scale, sectoral, collaborative R&D centres aligned with business or academia, depending on the focus of each institute's R&D. Policy-related research activity would be transferred to the "appropriate federal agencies" while the NRC's major science facilities would be moved under a non-profit organization charged with managing the country's large research infrastructure.

On the other hand, NRC management is finalizing a strategy to transform the organization into a business-driven research and technology organization featuring an initial set of flagship programs, a further de-emphasizing of individual institutes, control of up to 60% of the NRC budget by its senior executive committee (SEC) and significant new funding provided by industry.

"It's been 23 years since the NRC has spun something off. It's got a fantastic track record of incubating great ideas, building them up to critical mass and then spinning them off," says Panel chair Tom Jenkins, executive chairman and chief technology officer of Open Text Corp. "We met several times with NRC and were very encouraged by what we were told … We're simply encouraging the NRC to go further and faster with these concepts."

NRC's only reaction to the Jenkins recommendation is a carefully worded staff memo stressing that the Panel's recommendations are "just that — recommendations for consideration by government. There is no commitment that the government will accept or act on any or all of the recommendations".

The memo states that the SEC will spend a few days be digesting the Jenkins report and notes that both the Panel and the NRC are in sync on the need for "increased industrial alignment".

The tone of the memo led one NRC scientist to speculate that the president has "no intention at all to apply the recommendations of the Panel".

Jayson Myers, president of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, says that while the NRC needs to be improved and make its institutes work better, those objectives can be achieved within the NRC. "NRC could play a broader role in federal R&D delivery but changing the administrative structure is not the way to do it," says Myers. "Blowing up one structure and building another (IRIC) will create 10 years of bureaucratic wrangling and suck up all the air."

Far less contentious is the Panel's recommendation to spin off the NRC's Industrial Research Assistance Program into the proposed Industrial Research and Innovation Council and increase is budget.

"I have long advocated that IRAP be pulled out of NRC where it is a low priority and where for years the head of IRAP reported to the head of another division," says David Crane, an innovation consultant and former Toronto Star business writer. "IRAP could be an independent vehicle used by government for a variety of purposes. It could be a test bed, or learning curve, for the proposed (IRIC)."

Dr Denys Cooper, a consultant and former director of IRAPs strategic alliances branch and international collaboration, says that if NRC is broken up, IRAP will have no option but to find another home. IRAP's move to support larger projects following the demise of Technology Partnerships Canada should be augmented by an extension of its assistance.

"IRAP has always been in the clutches of Industry Canada which has been its bane," says Cooper. "I have always said IRAP should go into marketing."

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