William Buxton

The Cost of Saving Money: The Folly of Research Funding Policy in Canada (Part 1 of 2)

By William Buxton

Research funding in Canada is being transformed by cutbacks in public funding, a bias towards technology disciplines, pressure for academic research to become more self-funding by licensing intellectual property, and a very strong bias towards applied research which is co-funded by commercial concerns. The hope is to excel in the New Economy and reap the benefits of an improved standard of living and quality of life.

I think that this is naïve and misguided. At best, these policies will simply maintain the status quo, and at worst, they will destroy our universities and mortgage our children's future. In short, they are doomed to have exactly the opposite effect of that intended.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Even a superficial examination will show that our competitors also want to "Recreate the Silicon Valley Miracle" and profit from the New Economy. If we compare Canadian initiatives with those of our competitors, we come out somewhere in the middle. I fail to see how doing what our competitors are doing will achieve anything more than maintain the status quo. To advance our position, it is not sufficient to change what we were doing yesterday. We need to improve on what our competitors will be doing tomorrow. We're miles away from doing so, and that should be a national concern.

Death of Community

The key to much, if not most, academic excellence is what has always been known as the "community of scholars." That is to say, scholars and scientists reach the top of their field not only because they work hard and are smart individuals, but because they have smart friends and colleagues with whom they share and grow knowledge, and these people are based all over the world.

But the moment one's research funding is dependent on generating proprietary intellectual property for their corporate sponsor or for funding their university, what is the natural outcome? They will stop talking to others about their work. They will stop sharing, the collective intelligence will be destroyed, and previous colleagues will be rendered competitors.

In one fell swoop policy intended to stimulate scientific and intellectual growth is destroying one of the main mechanisms that make us smart. The effects are devastating, and evident at every academic conference that I attend.

Death of a Poster Child

I work in the computer graphics industry, one of Canada's success stories. The roots of this high-tech "poster-child" were largely founded on work from the National Research Council in Ottawa, the National Film Board in Montreal, and research in computer graphics at the Universities of Toronto, Waterloo, and Montreal.

Current policy is intended to provide the catalyst for the next generation of like successes. But if today's policies had of been in place in the late '60s and early '70s, the Canadian computer graphics industry would never have materialized!

The reason for this is simple. Under current policy, key funding criteria include demonstrating commercial potential and having the support of an industrial partner. Yet, if you ask anyone involved in the field at the time, those doing "serious" research viewed computer graphics at best as quaint, and more often than not, as wasting valuable computer resources and money "playing" with animation and images. We survived because there was enough slack in the system to fund curiosity-driven research and fringe projects; conditions that are as long-gone as they are needed to stimulate a healthy research environment.

What engines of our future economy are not being developed today because their implications or potential are not understood? Can our society really afford to "save" money by not adequately funding research?

(The conclusion of his article will appear in the next issue of RE$EARCH MONEY).

William Buxton is Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront Inc, Toronto.