Quebec academic community reeling from cuts to research, university operating grants

Despite the creation of a new ministry, the launch of a National Policy for Research and Innovation (PNRI) and encouraging words for research and innovation, the recent Quebec Budget is reducing the amount the provincial government provides to its granting councils. Details released December 6th reveal that the three councils under the Fonds de recherche du Québec banner will take a $31.2 million hit next FY.

Funding for natural sciences and engineering research will be reduced by 30%, prompting 3,800 researchers in those disciplines to sign a petition asking that the cut be reversed. Researchers dependent for funding upon the other two councils will suffer a 13% cut.

"It's a bit difficult these days. These are challenging times … The objective of the government is to balance the budget by the end of the next fiscal year and everyone is being asked to contribute," says Dr Rémi Quirion, chief scientist for Quebec and FRQ board chair. "The hope is that the government will reinvest in FY14-15 when the budget is balanced. That's the plan and the priority of the government and the prime minister (premier) ... I hope the reinvestment will be at the same level as SQRI."

The shortfall in FRQ funding occurred with the cancellation of the update to the previous government's Quebec Research and Innovation Strategy (SQRI) which was well underway when the provincial election saw the Liberal party replaced by a minority Parti Québécois administration. In his Budget speech, Nicholas Marceau, minister of Finance and the Economy, said his government was "stunned to discover" that $150 million in funding for SQRI was never allocated by the previous government (R$, November 21/12). The Budget provided $40 million in transitional funding to bridge the gap but a shortfall remained.

The three provincial granting councils continue to receive A-base funding but funding was delivered through SQRI was cut. When the one-year SQRI update was cancelled and replaced by the forthcoming PNRI, the new government did not make up the difference.

"For the FRQNT, a significant portion of its budget was associated with SQRI," says Quirion. "It's too early to say how the granting councils will react to the cuts. The three boards will be discussing it in the next two weeks but there will be no new initiatives."

The FRQNT community says any cuts would be damaging to ongoing research projects, especially those awarded over a multi-year period.

"Scientific research in the natural sciences, engineering and technology is now structured into 30 networks ... and include approximately 1,300 researchers," FRQNT researchers stated in a letter to Pierre Duchesne, minister of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology. "A 30% (reduction) would undermine irreparably the foundation for research and training in Quebec ... The signatories of this letter ... urge you to defend the integrity of scientific research in Quebec universities (and keep) the FRQNT budget at its current level."

"Here we see the perverse effects of budgets that are allocated to science through changing priorities," says Dr Yves Gingras, Canada Research Chair in History and Sociology of Science at the Univ of Quebec at Montreal and scientific director of the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies. "Beyond the rhetoric of the knowledge economy, the reality is that universities and research are areas that are often first to be cut as they remain abstract to the population."

Quirion says the work of two outside groups tasked with consulting the academic and business communities on the update to SQRI have been received and will prove valuable as work progresses on PNRI. "They have presented their reports although they're not public yet," he says. "There was strong participation from all types of experts and many good suggestions."

In addition to the cuts to FRQ, the Quebec government also announced a $124-million decrease in operating funds for the province's universities, a drop of 5.2%. To make matters worse, the cuts must be found in the remaining four months of the current FY, resulting in an impact of nearly 16%.

Leading academic opposition to the cuts is Dr Heather Munroe-Blum. Last week , the McGill Univ principal and vice-chancellor, sent an angry letter to minister Duchesne, followed by a December 13 board resolution opposing "the $19.1 million retroactive cut to its operating grant"

"The Board of Governors ... deplores the cuts in provincial funding to universities and research granting councils announced by the Minister on December 6 as both excessive and injurious to the core mission of research universities in Quebec," states the resolution. "We will also take every measure necessary to persuade the government to withdraw these harmful and ill-timed cuts."

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