CERC program shows that Canada is serious in attracting world-class research expertise

Unprecedented media coverage of the winners of the inaugural competition for the Canada Research Excellence Chairs (CERC) program has thrust Canada's attempts to build world-class targeted research expertise into the public consciousness. The May 17th announcement was spread across the country generating local, national and international attention for the 19 winners who were each awarded $10 million over seven years to pursue cutting-edge research in areas selected by the government as critical to Canada's development as a knowledge-based economy.

The program's success in attracting the world's best researchers in key disciplines has been embraced by provincial governments, individual institutions and the private sector, all of which are sweetening the award with funding of their own. Once leveraged funding is factored in (of which just $20 million comes from industry), CERC will deliver a $600-million plus wallop, making it among the most lucrative research chairs awards in the world.

"(The media coverage) has been great. It's been pretty uniform across the country," says Michelé Boutin, executive director of the Canada Research Chairs program with responsibility for CERC. "I don't think we were expecting to be picked up so much. It's fantastic."

Announced in the 2008 federal Budget, the CERC competition whittled down 135 proposals from 41 universities to a short list of 40 proposals that corresponded to the four priority areas outlined in the 2007 federal S&T Strategy and the sub-priorities established by the Science, Technology and Innovation Council (April 30/09). The CERC chairs were distributed as follows: information and communications technologies (4); health and related life sciences and technologies (6); natural resources and energy (4); and, environmental sciences and technologies (3). The latter included one in automotive technologies, as prescribed by the government.

The final phase of the competition experienced considerable blowback from institutions where the successful researchers were being recruited, resulting in 19 out of 20 chairs being filled. Both the Univ of Toronto and McGill Univ lost two chairs when their recipients declined to accept the CERC awards, resulting in the latter institution failing to secure a single CERC.

"It was a bidding war and it put pressure on the institutions from which they were being drawn. Some put up a stiff fight to maintain those people," says Derek Burney, a former senior civil servant and corporate executive who chaired the CERC selection panel. "When you go after a top-quality candidate, the existing employer ups the ante."

The extremely high quality of the candidates recruited through CERC is undeniable and promises to transform research in areas where Canada already possesses considerable strength. In almost all cases, researchers are accompanied by teams and will be augmented by graduate students using state-of-the-art research infrastructure. The majority of CERC research units will also include Canada Research Chair (CRC) holders, according to Boutin.

"It's very clear that the universities are building on investments made through the granting councils, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and CRC and they were able to attract key people," she says. "The average in leveraged funding was about $19 million in additional support and there have been more resources committed since then so it's likely higher than that."

The largely positive publicity surrounding CERC is a welcome relief from criticism aimed at the Conservative government's handling of the research and innovation files in recent years, with high profile attacks in international journals and from Canadian scientists concerned with stagnant support for the granting councils and cutbacks to programs related to climate change.

Not all media coverage has been positive, however, with many noting that the 19 successful chair holders were all men. The government was concerned enough with the gender imbalance among the winners and commissioned a study prior to the announcement to determine why women failed to secure a single chair. The CERC program has also come under fire from the Canadian Association of University Teachers, arguing that it "imposes new costs on institutions and diverts resources" — bankrolling so-called research stars while the larger research community is suffering from stagnant granting council funding.

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