Peter Morand

Making government R&D more effective

By Dr Peter Morand

As part of its annual benchmarking exercise, the Conference Board of Canada has just released How Canada Performs: A Report Card on Canada. And once again we find that Canada's report card "tells the story of a country moving to the back of the class because of its underperformance in almost all subjects." Although Canada ranks second in education and skills among countries compared in the study, Canada remains near the bottom (ranked 13th) in the area of innovation.

It has been argued (R$, July 23/07, p.8) that Canada could enhance its performance by enabling greater access to the vast knowledge pool that exists offshore, particularly in the area of technology applications. A related issue is whether the federal government's in-house laboratories are making the best use of taxpayers' dollars in helping Canada perform better in regard to innovation.

What follows is an overview of current practices and a proposal for realigning the federal government's S&T activities that employ about 25,000 people with an annual investment of more than $4 billion.

Building Empires

Because of the manner in which the federal government's science–based departments are funded, there is a built-in incentive for the respective ministers and deputy ministers to work vertically rather than horizontally. The name of the game is to get funding for as many projects as possible and to protect one's turf. What we have seen over the years is that, in the good times, departments expand their R&D capabilities, often duplicating or overlapping with R&D activities of other departments.

When an economic downturn occurs, there's a huge scramble to determine what parts of the R&D infrastructure have to be dismantled, the unfortunate downside being the displacement of highly qualified personnel and the untimely disposition of state-of-art scientific equipment. This is surely not an effective way for Canada to build the kind of well-integrated R&D capabilities and infrastructure needed for today's highly competitive knowledge-based global environment.

The incidence of conflicts of interest that often arise between scientists and policy makers in certain departments is another criticism leveled at the way the latter operate. Some of these conflicts get a public airing in the media but it is worrisome to think that a number of these may never come to light.

As a scientist in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Dr David Schindler led the Experimental Lakes Project by conducting interdisciplinary research on boreal ecosystems; the results were the basis for developing sound policies for management of the environment in Canada and abroad. He left DFO a few years ago to join the University of Alberta as professor of ecology where his outstanding research in this area has been acclaimed both nationally and internationally. In the Killam Lecture which he gave in Edmonton last month on "The Role of Science in Making Sound Environmental Policy", Schindler stressed that he felt he was far more effective in influencing policy makers as a university researcher than as a government scientist under the modus operandi that prevails in his former department.

Splitting the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) from the National Research Council (NRC) in 1978 removed potential conflicts in the allocation of research funds to university researchers versus in-house NRC researchers. Nevertheless, many science-based departments sponsor R&D funding programs for which they set up their own elaborate administrative apparatus for the selection of recipients such as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's $145-million Agricultural Bioproducts Innovation Program announced some time ago.

The federal government already has research funding agencies that are specialists in the arm's length adjudication of programs to support university research and research partnerships. One then has to wonder why science-based departments set up superfluous adjudication processes.

One way to address the issues identified above is to offload research laboratories from science-based departments to our existing national laboratory infrastructure (i.e. NRC), to our universities and to our growing knowledge-based industries. The departments in question would then focus entirely on policy formulation, regulatory issues and monitoring activities.

Ottawa has begun thinking along these lines, albeit in a much less comprehensive manner. Following through on a statement in the 2007 federal budget, an Independent Panel of Experts was appointed by Treasury Board to "explore opportunities for achieving greater synergy among the major sectors undertaking science and technology activities through transfer of non-regulatory federal laboratories to universities and/or the private sector."

After extensive consultations and numerous proposals, the panel tagged five laboratories for transfer, noting that nearly all of the proposals received were "potential candidates for future consideration in the implementation of a longer-term federal strategy for inter-sectoral S&T integration."

Without doubt Canada must achieve better integration and efficiency for its substantial S&T investment in order to make long overdue improvements in its innovation performance. The panel fulfilled its mandate and made a good start in identifying possible candidates for transfer. If the government were to follow through with this agenda, the difficult task that lies ahead is how to manage this transition.

Since its inception in the early 1900s the NRC has played a seminal role in demonstrating to Canadians that S&T is critical for maintaining a high standard of living and a healthy economy. The NRC has a well-integrated R&D capability and has established viable partnerships with universities and knowledge-based businesses.

Why not build on this priceless asset and empower NRC to manage the orderly offloading of the science-based departments' R&D activities to achieve a better integration of Canada's R&D infrastructure? This would result in the consolidation of the existing network of national laboratories, research-intensive universities and health research centres and strengthen efforts to instill a much stronger R&D culture in the industrial sector.

Peter Morand is former dean of science and engineering at the Univ of Ottawa, past president of NSERC and past president & CEO of the Canadian Science & Technology Growth Fund, petermorand@rogers.com