Federal Budget Cracks Open the Door on Innovation

March 16, 2010
The recently launched federal budget casts some new light on innovation. As one of the most research intensive sectors in Canada, the success of the biosciences is heavily influenced by public policy and government attention. Included in the budget are welcome enhancements like:

• Providing $45 million over five years to establish a post-doctoral fellowship program which will significantly enhance Canada's ability to compete for this coveted workforce, by attracting top level talent with fellowships valued at $70,000 per year for two years, and delivered through the granting councils. The highly-skilled workhorse of the knowledge economy, post-docs in Canada have traditionally been under-valued.


• Increasing the combined annual budgets of Canada's research granting councils by an additional $32 million per year ($16M, $13M, and $3M per year to the CIHR; NSERC and SSHRC*, respectively) plus an additional $8 million per year to the Indirect Costs of Research Programs. The latter helps to defray the substantial incremental overhead costs incurred by academic institutions that conduct research.


• A commitment of $75 million to Genome Canada, which includes a proposed competition in forest health and environmental biosciences. After more than a decade of hefty global investments in the enabling technologies of genomics, it is particularly important to maintain investments as the disciplines collectively known as genomics become translational in scope, and begin to yield even more applied outputs than the first generation. Genome Canada has traditionally supported large-scale multi-million dollar projects, and is particularly well-suited to jurisdictions with well articulated matching fund programs.


• Continued investment in the rejuvenation of Canada's research and post-secondary education infrastructure during the second year of Canada's Economic Action Plan.


• Providing $135 million over two years to the National Research Council of Canada's regional innovation clusters program.


• Doubling the budget of the College and Community Innovation Program with an additional $15 million per year, thereby allowing Colleges to offer R&D and technology to their neighbouring communities and companies.

The budget documents refer to the funding renewal for the regional development agencies which support innovation across Canada. Included in that envelope are $19 million annually to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. Included in this is the much-lauded Atlantic Innovation Fund, a leveraged fund which has been at the heart of an elegant paradigm shift in the commercialization of R&D in Atlantic Canada.

The budget documents point to Canada's hefty investments in publicly supported R&D, as a percentage of GDP in comparison to the other G7 nations. Much of this owes to a legacy of having built, over more than a century, public research capacity reflective of the diversity and breadth of the country, as well as a deliberate post-war effort to bring post-secondary education to the more distant regions of Canada's vast geography.

The budget documents make reference to improving the regulatory system and reducing red tape. While decidedly laudable, the measures for the upcoming fiscal year do not yet tackle the thorny issues related to optimizing Canada's regulatory environment for the commercialization of bioscience discovery. These issues will need to be addressed in order to capitalize on the enormous potential which the Bio-Economy offers.

The documents also allude to ways in which businesses' innovation efforts will be assisted. Included in this are administrative improvements to Canada's Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) Tax Incentive Program. The other business-oriented improvements, aimed at enhancing Canada's commercialization record, include the $5 million under NSERC's allocation that has been ear-marked under NSERC's strategy for Partnerships and Innovation, as well as new programming aimed at enhancing the uptake of Canadian technology by federal departments and agencies.

*Canadian institutes for Health Research; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, respectively


For additional information on the federal budget, please visit:
http://www.budget.gc.ca/2010/home-eng.html

For various perspectives on the federal budget, please visit:
http://www.apec-econ.ca/whatsnew.asp?ID=85
http://www.pwc.com/ca/en/tax/budgets/2010/index.jhtmlWT.ac=TW20100304-1
http://www.biotech.ca/en/what-we-do/biotechnology-advocacy-dialogue/budget.aspx

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