CIHR the biggest player as federal support for biotech inches up to nearly $1 billion

Nearly half of all federal support for biotechnology in FY08-09 was provided through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), which allocated nearly 92% to the higher education sector, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada. Federal biotech support totalled $936.8 million, up 1.8% from the previous year or less than the rate of inflation.

Performers outside government received 71% or $665 million of the annual total with the remainder spent within government departments and agencies. Of the latter, the National Research Council was the largest intramural performer ($114 million), followed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada ($66.3 million) and the institutes of CIHR ($26.6 million).

Institutions within the higher education sector received by far the largest amount of biotech S&T funding, capturing $550.1 million or 58.7% of the total. In addition to CIHR, major sources of funding for higher education included the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council ($75.6 million) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation ($47.8 million).

Other performers (primarily non-profit institution) were the second largest performer and they were dominated by the regional genomics centres affiliated with Genome Canada.

R&D accounted for 95.1% of all federal expenditures, with related scientific activities accounting for 4.9%.

Federal support for biotech accounted for 13% of all federal R&D spending and 9% of the $10.4 billion the federal government dedicated to S&T.

In FY08-09, there were 2,104 employees engaged in biotechnology S&T — an amount relatively unchanged from the previous year. The majority (1,374) were engaged in R&D, followed by 241 in related scientific activities and 241 in administration.

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