Health research increases share of Canadian R&D expenditures — StatsCan

New estimates indicate that health now accounts for nearly one quarter of all R&D expenditures in Canada, with 63% of the total performed by the higher education sector. Preliminary Statistics Canada data place health R&D at $6.6 billion in 2006 or 23.3% of $28.4 billion of overall expenditures. That's up 6.8% from $6.2 billion in 2005 when the health share was 22.7%.

The current emphasis on health R&D is in stark contrast to the years before the previous Liberal government ramped up investments in the sector. In 1989, for instance, health R&D stood at just $1.4 billion or 14.3% of all expenditures for that year.

The increase in health R&D is also captured on a per capita basis — $202 per capita in 2006 compared to just $50 in 1989 and $82 in 1997 when federal investments in research began to accelerate. Data show that the higher education sector is the main beneficiary of the increases.

In 2006, higher education accounted for $4.1 billion of the total or 69.2%. That's an annual increase of 10%, considerably higher than the rate of increase for all health R&D. The majority of higher education R&D is performed in Ontario and Quebec, followed by Alberta and British Columbia. Data are for 2004, the most recent year for which geographic allocation is available. (see chart).

Despite the funding increases, advocates for post-secondary health research have been pushing for more federal funding. They point to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research which is now able to fund just 16% of high-quality proposals — a level that the latest federal Budget did little to address (R$, March 26/07).

Business spending on health R&D in 2006 ranks a distant second at $2.1 billion, an increase of 2.5% over the previous year. The rate of increase of business health R&D performance has slowed in recent years after a long period of rapid growth between 1992 and 2002 when it surged from $405 million to $1.8 billion. The pharmaceutical industry blames the current situation on Canada's deteriorating competitive position compared to other advanced nations.

On the funding side, the sector with the most rapid rate of growth is higher education, which surged 10% in 2006 to $1.8 billion. Nearly as impressive is the private non-profit sector, which increased funding 9.7% to $533 million. It is followed by provincial governments (up 8.3% to $418 million), the federal government (up 6.7% to $1.2 billion), business (up 4% to $1.6 billion) and foreign sources (up 2.8% to $908 million).

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