World-renowned AIDS researcher Pierre-Rafick Sekaly, a resident of Canada since 1986, is packing up his labs at the University of Montreal and McGill. He’s taking with him more than 20 researchers who will move to the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute in Florida, where Sekaly expects to double his research fund to $7 million.

Sekaly wants to proceed to clinical trials on humans, which is impossible with his current funding in Canada of $3.5 million. “I want to move my research into an area that can make a difference for humans,” he said. “So I need to move to a place with the necessary funding.”

The move is symptomatic of the climate in the research world: while Obama has invested some $10 billion into scientific research in his stimulus package, Harper has cut $148 million.

Though the recent federal budget was a catalyst, Sekaly says he has been debating the move for some time.

“It’s really a problem of overall vision,” he said. “In the U.S., there’s a lot more.”

In addition to the heightened research capacity, Sekaly said he is also motivated by more opportunities for his young staff south of the border.

Michael Hammond, a spokesperson for Industry Canada, pointed out that Canada had not cut its “base funding,” and that it has increased investment in research in previous years, “surpassing a historic level of $10 billion in 2007-08.” Sekaly maintains that the life of a researcher is very difficult in Canada.

“I’d like to see what Obama has done in the U.S.—he’s put science back where it should be, which is on top. Canadian science should be a top priority,” said Sekaly, adding that “if not, we are going to lose our best people.”

As of yet, this has not been the experience at U of T, according to Cheryl Misak, vice-president and provost. “We haven’t yet seen any mass exodus of our top people because of the last budget. It might be that none of our people had their grants cut, or it’s early days, but we haven’t seen this yet.”

Nevertheless, Misak is familiar with the drain to the States. “Our people are always being recruited away by fantastic places elsewhere,” she said. “In my office, we’re always dealing with what I call retention battles for our finest people. We’ll have Ivy League offices offering our people just unbelievable amounts of money.”

If there are no changes in Canadian funding, however, universities may start losing these battles. This past March, over 2000 Canadian researchers signed an open letter urging Harper to return the $148 million to basic research.

“We need to put the young generation on a track where they value research,” said Sekaly. “Right now, it’s such a tough job.”