CBC News
The head of the not-for-profit agency responsible for funding large-scale science and genetics projects is perplexed after the foundation was shut out of the federal budget.
Genome Canada president Martin Godbout said his organization was expecting about $120 million from the government to help fund new international research projects, including those led by Canadian scientists. That number would be in line with the $140 million the group received in the 2008 budget and the $100 million it got in 2007.
Instead, Genome Canada received no mention in this year’s budget, presented Tuesday.
“It’s like we fell between the chairs,” said Godbout. “This was an infrastructure budget, and so money went into that, but we got nothing.”
The organization, established nine years ago with a mandate to develop and support large-scale genomics and proteomics research projects, has become a key funding partner for a host of medical and genetic researchers across the country, supporting 33 major research projects with operating grants of $10 million a year.
Genome Canada research aims to improve forests, crops, the environment, health and new technology development.
Since its creation in 2000, it has received $840 million from the federal government and raised another $1 billion through partner co-funding and interest earnings.
Godbout said the lack of funding won’t affect projects already underway and funded through previous budgets, but it will limit Canada’s ability to contribute to new, large-scale genetics research projects.
For a government-run funding agency like the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, no mention in a budget would mean a continuation of existing annual budgets, but for Genome Canada, which operates outside the government, a lack of funding effectively stalls any new research initiatives, said Godbout.
Liberal party science and technology critic Marc Garneau told CBC News the funding of Genome Canada would be an issue the party would address with the government when it discusses amendments to the budget.
It will also raise cuts in the budget to Canada’s three research councils. The cuts total close to $150 million and peak in 2011-12 at $87.2 million, Garneau said.
But he stopped short of saying these issues would be deal-breakers in ongoing budget talks.
“What we’re going to do is continue to remind the government that they are not doing enough in that particular area,” said Garneau. “I won’t tell you whether or not this is a show-stopper because I’m not making those decisions, but I think our party will continue to point out the lack of real support in science by this government.”
The lack of funding for Genome Canada in the budget was “devastating,” said Ken Dewar, an associate professor in human genetics at Montreal’s McGill University.
“If we sit in a brand new building with brand new equipment and have scholarships for students, what are they going to do when there’s no money to actually do an experiment?” he said.
The research funding is mainly used to train and maintain highly qualified personnel and to buy supplies for experiments, added Dewar.
Dewar is working on sequencing strains of C. difficile bacteria that have been plaguing hospitals.
The federal budget contrasts with that of the U.S., where funding appears to be more balanced between infrastructure upgrades and support for leading-edge research, said Dewar, who is also the acting scientific director of the McGill University and Génome Québec Innovation Centre.
It isn’t the first time Genome Canada received nothing in a federal budget. In 2006, the agency also received no mention, but Godbout said it was understood at the time that the $165 million the group received in 2005 would have to last for two years.
During question period on Thursday, Garneau questioned the government on whether the lack of funds was an oversight.
Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear disputed that funding was cut, saying Genome Canada was still receiving funds from the two previous budget announcements, and that these funds amounted to $106 million this year and $108 million next year.
“This government has in place two five-year contracts with Genome Canada retaining almost a quarter of a billion dollars for science research,” said Goodyear. “We’re doing that, Mr. Speaker, because we know Genome Canada is good for Canada and the good work they do is good for Canadians’ health.”
But Garneau disputed that claim, arguing the government was counting money that was previously committed in its calculations.
“Canadian scientists can only contribute to new discoveries and create the jobs of tomorrow if we give them the support they urgently need,” said Garneau. “Is this government deliberately undermining Canada’s scientists or [has it] simply forgotten to fund their future work?”
Godbout said that while money from last year’s budget was allocated over the next four years to fund ongoing projects, there was no indication that they would receive nothing this year for new initiatives.
He pointed to a project to sequence the genomes of 50 different types of cancer, led by Ontario Institute of Cancer Research scientific director Tom Hudson, as one project that would be short of funding without further federal support.
Hudson is participating in a worldwide effort to study the genetics of cancer. The Ontario government is funding a $25 million project on pancreatic cancer, and researchers were hoping the federal government would commit to studying other forms of cancer, said Rhea Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Ontario institute.
Godbout said he has expressed his concerns to the federal opposition parties but has yet to speak with the government on the issue.
Restraint for Everything but Sports February 23, 2010
Posted by rogerhollander in Canada, Economic Crisis, Sports.Tags: Canada, canada budget, Canada Conservatives, canada liberals, Economic Crisis, government spending, harper government, linda mcquaig, olympics, pan am games, roger hollander, sports, Stephen Harper
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No cost has been spared in mounting a giant spectacle of spandex-clad athletes performing dazzling feats in massive public venues.
Certainly, nobody seems to be letting the $6 billion price tag for Vancouver’s Olympic extravaganza get in the way.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against sports. I appreciate the nuances of a fine skeleton performance as much as the next person.
My point is simply to question why goals other than mounting gala sports events are routinely dismissed on the grounds that we can’t afford them.
Of course, sports extravaganzas often have side benefits. We’re told that with the 2015 Pan Am Games coming here, Toronto may finally get its public transit system upgraded.
How’s that? Are the Pan Am countries – an assortment of mostly poverty-stricken Latin American nations – going to chip in to improve Toronto’s subway system?
No. We’re going to pay. So why don’t we just decide to do it without the Games, given the need and the looming climate change disaster?
The conventional explanation is that the public won’t pay otherwise. But is the public the real obstacle here?
We’ve been exhorted to believe in the magic of sports, in the transformative power of the Olympic torch – that no dream is too big to dream, that guts and willpower will bring us glory.
But next week, when Ottawa brings down its budget, all that big-thinking and sky-high believing is to be shelved. We’ll be advised to think small, think restraint, focus on the impossibility of things. Deficits will own the podium.
That’s not because the public only cares about sports. It’s because the corporate world only supports public investments when it comes to sports and war, from which it makes money. But it wants to hold the line on public investment in health care, education, child care, social supports, etc.
So it’s tried to convince us these things aren’t affordable, or that we don’t want to pay for them – as we did in the past.
From the end of World War II, federal spending was almost always above 15 per cent of GDP, until the massive Liberal spending cuts of the mid-1990s brought it way down to about 12 per cent, notes economist Armine Yalnizyan.
Those cuts – made to reduce deficits caused by recession and overly tight monetary policy – became permanent, even after balanced budgets were quickly restored in the late 1990s.
Despite a decade of huge federal surpluses since then, the Liberals and the Conservatives failed to restore spending levels that prevailed during the prosperous early postwar decades, cutting taxes in response to corporate pressure instead.
The Harper government has made clear that once the stimulus package expires, federal spending will return to the historically low levels of the past decade.
But this is disastrous policy. Given the severity of the ongoing recession, what is needed now is massive public investment to put the country back to work and rebuild our crumbling social and physical infrastructure.
For millions of young people, holding a job is a dream just as surely as competing before the hometown crowd.
But we’re supposed to believe that, beyond sports, we can’t afford to meet our needs, no matter how pressing.
Perhaps we could finally get some serious action on climate change if it were a curling bonspiel – rather than simply a crisis that threatens life as we know it on this planet.
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