Howard Burton

Worthy Precedents

By Howard Burton

Anyone anxious to solicit government funding for their cause quickly learns that “precedent” is a four letter word: “I’d love to help you, sir”, says the earnest bureaucrat, “but there is no existing program for your project”. To those with a more business-oriented mindset this verges on the absurd. Most things really worth doing are innovative, and if something is truly innovative, there is a good possibility that there is no existing mechanism. To boldly take a risk within a stolid framework is, quite simply, oxymoronic.

This clash of perspectives between business leaders and government policymakers is hardly newsworthy — nor, to some extent, is it unjustifiable. Government, by necessity, must be more careful than the private sector. The responsible allocation of public monies is a sacred trust, and woe betide the country whose bureaucracy functions like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, willing to go bankrupt several times before striking it big.

And yet. For this country to truly develop a culture of innovation that enables it to move from its current 14th place to the top five in terms of research and development performance, it will have to be innovative in more ways than it might have possibly contemplated. It is not enough to merely “encourage innovation and the commercialization of knowledge in the private sector”, as the Innovation Strategy puts it. The government must also look inwards and rigorously examine ways by which it can be more responsive — if not, indeed, proactive — so as to quickly recognize meritorious opportunities and be firmly equipped with the capacity to move swiftly to support them.

Last Friday, the Government of Canada announced $25 million in direct support to Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics over the next five years to support its agenda of basic, foundational research. There was no existing program for this money and the announcement was made well outside of the usual budgetary process: the precedent-setting nature of such a government initiative is enough to make any bureaucrat shiver, and many did. But it was unquestionably the right thing to do.

Here was an initiative that had consistent and emphatic support from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the granting agency directly concerned with foundational physics. Here was an initiative that had been awarded a remarkable $5.6 million from Canada Foundation for Innovation for the construction of its new facilities, despite CFI’s formal and usual wariness to fund premium-quality buildings. Here was an initiative that had continually exhibited its determination to work cooperatively in partnership with all research universities from coast to coast, deliberately designing programs to strongly enhance the Canadian theoretical physics culture. And, perhaps most remarkably, here was an initiative that was bringing to the table $120 million in private monies in an age when governments are desperate to encourage private-public sector partnerships of any substantial scope.

It should have been a no-brainer. But it wasn’t. Obtaining the government support for Perimeter Institute was a long and involved process that required considerable effort and had numerous setbacks. It required the constant time and attention of Mike Lazaridis, CEO of Research In Motion and $100-million donor, who made countless trips to Ottawa to patiently explain to all and sundry that without strong government support, Perimeter would never have the credibility to achieve truly world-class dominance. On the issue of precedent, he had to continually emphasize that the precedent of private individuals contributing $120 million towards an initiative that had consistently passed peer-review and was manifestly in the nation’s best interest was one that any rational public body would be desperate to encourage rather than flee from.

In the end, the government response was passionate and committed — a strong endorsement of the project that will ensure Perimeter’s future in the international scientific arena. But I can’t help wonder how an equally innovative concept with a slightly less passionate, wealthy or celebrated advocate might have fared. The hurdles are high.

Howard Burton is executive director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.