Federal government continues to ramp up spending on biotechnology S&T

The federal government is putting its money where its mouth is, more than doubling funding for biotechnology S&T over the past six years in support of a sector it has targeted as a key economic driver for the future. Ottawa’s funding of biotechnology in FY03-04 alone rose by $68 million or 10.1% for a total of $746 million, fuelled in large part by increased funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Genome Canada (see lower chart).

R&D comprised $717.0 million or 94.1% of the biotech S&T total, which accounts for 13% of the $5.7 billion in federal R&D expenditures in FY03-04.

The largest performer of federally funded biotechnology S&T is the higher education sector ($379.1 million), according to the latest data from Statistics Canada. It is followed by the federal government itself ($243.7 million), non-profit institutions largely funded by Genome Canada ($88.7 million), businesses ($29.4 million) and foreign-based organizations ($5.1 million).

The lion’s share of biotech S&T funding for the higher education was provided by CIHR ($271.1 million), the Canada Foundation for Innovation ($76.3 million) and Science and Engineering Research Canada (NSERC) ($59.2 million).

The National Research Council (NRC) is by far the largest intramural performer of biotech S&T, accounting for $114.7 million or 47.1% of the $243.7-million total. Next is Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) ($63.9 million), CIHR ($18.0 million), Health Canada ($12.6 million), National Defence ($8.6 million), Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) ($7.9 million) and Industry Canada ($6.3 million).

The business sector received most of its $29.4 million in federal biotech S&T funding from three departments or agencies: Industry Canada ($19.4 million), NRC ($5.6 million) and National Defence ($2.6 million).

In FY03-04, the NRC employed the most people devoted to biotech S&T (748), followed by AAFC (400), Health Canada (197), CIHR (111) and NRCan (69). The total across federal departments and agencies in 1,708, or 5% of the all federal employees devoted to S&T.

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