“It would be a shame for Canada to lose the great edge that it has right now,” lamented Guri Giaever, an assistant professor and genomics researcher at U of T. She, along with her husband and fellow scientist Corey Nislow, moved to Canada in 2006. The couple found that the Bush Administration did not make for a friendly educational environment, as research grants dried up. Three years later, the two find themselves in a familiar predicament.
Genome Canada, a major source of research funding, will not receive new money in the 2009 budget. Scientists can’t help but look southward, as the Obama stimulus package adds $3.9 billion to the National Institute of Health, America’s main funding agency for medical research. While Giaever and Nislow receive more funding from the NIH than Canadian agencies, they fear coming up short.
“We’ll have to see how things play out. If we can’t get funded, we have to explore all options,” said Giaver. “We got lucky this round of funding and we’ll be funded from the NIH for the next four years.” Even a single grant from the Canadian Institute for Health Research is not sufficient to run a genomics laboratory, so the scientist has to devote more time to grant-writing, which detracts from research.
Initially attracted by Canada’s reputation in the field, Giaever is discouraged as she sees world-class colleagues passed over. “Canada is a place that is really leading in genomic research, and it would be a missed opportunity not to train good people and create good jobs and more top-notch science.”
The Social Sciences and Humanities Council and the National Science and Engineering Council get snubbed. Professor Carl Wieman of the University of British Columbia knows what Giaever and Nislow are going through. The 2001 Nobel laureate in physics moved to Canada in 2006, who voiced his dismay at the lack of funding.
“In science and your science infrastructure, these aren’t things that you can turn on and off,” he told the Globe & Mail. “Funding that fluctuates up and down just wastes money ultimately. People get started and then it has to stop, a program stops; students go off and work on other things, and it’s just very inefficient so you kind of need this long-term stability.”
The funding gap is a concern, said U of T spokesperson Rob Steiner, but some sources of funding actually have increased. “On infrastructure and graduate students this budget actually does a good job for us,” he said. Steiner pointed out that though agencies like Genome Canada are missing out, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation will get $750 million over the next three years. Another $2 billion in infrastructure money will go to labs across the country. Steiner says U of T is in position to get a sizable share of these grants.
“On the graduate side the budget actually included $87.5 million over the next three years to expand the Canada graduate scholarship program,” said Steiner, though the full effects of the budget on university research are yet to be seen. “We’re trying to understand from the federal government what is going on with tri-council [major agencies such as Genome Canada] funding in the long term and what the actual effects might be.”
