Granting councils delay new programs as Budget boosts funding levels less than 5%

2005 Budget

Guarded optimism over the Budget’s modest funding boost to university research is being tempered by clawbacks to the two granting councils and an increase for health research that falls far short of what’s needed to fulfill its mandate. Collectively, the three agencies received $75 million in new A-base funding. But only the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) emerged unscathed by the $1-billion reallocation commonly referred to as the Manley Exercise (see chart).

Both Science and Engineering Research Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) will see increasing portions of their A-base deducted over the next three years, cutting the increases they received in the Budget by more than half. NSERC’s FY05-06 budget now stands at $675 million (excluding flow-through funds) while SSHRC’s budget will be $237 million.

CIHR was not required to contribute to the reallocation but the level of increase provided in the Budget has stymied plans to build on its phase I initiatives and roll out major programs such as the Global Health Research Initiative, regenerative medicine and clinical research.

“You don’t want to undermine the investments you’ve already made by unconsciously doing things that will undo that investment. If Canadian health researchers start leaving like they did in the nineties, it will undo the $13 billion the federal government has put in over the past few years. It won’t take much to keep them here but this Budget hasn’t done it yet,” says CIHR president Dr Alan Bernstein. “We need to demonstrate value for money to Canadians, the return on investment for research that has happened so far.”

Bernstein notes that it has always been the government’s stated intention to increase CIHR’s budget over time to at least $1 billion and the time to achieve that funding milestone is rapidly approaching. Another key request is a longer-term outlook on what increases CIHR can expect in the coming years.

“We were mandated by Parliament to be strategic and develop major initiatives that will move research from academia into the real world. To do that and deliver on our mandate you need multi-year funding and multi-year increases in our budget,” he says. “We didn’t get that and I have to understand why ... so I have to have those conversations.”

Although NSERC will ultimately receive a smaller increase to it’s A-base than CIHR, president Dr Tom Brzustowski is taking reassurance from the Budget’s wording that future year will bring additional funding.

“It’s not as much as I’d hoped for but we were given an increase nevertheless and it’s described in language which augers well for future treatment … I think that counts for a lot,” he says. “It will allow us to deal with no better than we have in the past with the growth of applicants for Discovery Grants but no worse either. But we won’t be able to make any of the improvement we were hoping for in other programs.

The Budget maintained its traditional approach of providing symmetrical increases to the A-bases of the granting councils, leaving SSHRC with an $11-million increase for FY05-06, which drops to a paltry $7.4-million after subtracting its contribution to reallocation. SSHRC president Dr Marc Renaud says the new money will allow the agency to protect the success rate for young researchers and continue with a few pilot programs but little else. But he says the treatment of the granting councils this time around is understandable.

“(The science agenda) is not very high on the government’s priorities but in the current context it makes sense. SSHRC would have benefitted from much more but there are priorities we can understand,” he says. “The government had to cope with the army and cities and the transfers to the provinces. At least there’s a signal that the science and innovation agenda is not dead.”

But SSHRC’s fortunes could change if its planned memorandum to Cabinet for funding to execute its transformation into a so-called knowledge council is successful. SSHRC is seeking a Budget of more than $500 million to dramatically enhance its support of its research disciplines and has recently completed extensive consultations (R$, September 3/04).

“We’re going to be testing the waters much more tangibly with our memorandum to Cabinet,” says Renaud. “We have to see what this government wants to do with social sciences and humanities, which are literally undergoing a revolution in the way they’re functioning.”

REALLOCATION ERROR

SSHRC’s determination to transform itself into a modern research funding agency overrides its disappointment with the Budget, but not its treatment in the reallocation exercise. Renaud says both SSHRC and NSERC were supposed to avoid cuts to their base budgets by using lapsed funding from the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program.

But according to Renaud and SSHRC executive VP Janet Halliwell, an error by Industry Canada resulted in permanent cuts should should never have occurred.

“We were advised that in fact it would be taken care of and it was agreed it was an error and would be repaired,” says Halliwell. “It was an error.”

Officials at NSERC acknowledge that their original understanding was that lapsed CRC funding would provide the agency’s contribution to reallocation. But no one would confirm that an error was made by Industry Canada, nor would they comment further.

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