Montreal

Chrétien: ‘brain gain, not brain drain’. Credit: AP

Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien has announced that the federal government is to fund 2,000 new research chairs at universities, 1,200 of them over the next three years.

“This is incredibly exciting,” commented Robert Prichard, president of the University of Toronto. Henry Friesen, president of the Medical Research Council, calls the announcement “stunning”.

Chrétien, who has dismissed reports of large-scale emigration of scientists for better opportunities elsewhere, said in his announcement that the plan is “for brain gain, not brain drain”.

The plan was proposed by the heads of the research fund-granting councils, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and some university presidents, in particular the rector of the Université de Montreal, Robert Lacroix, and the president of the University of British Columbia, Martha Piper.

The purpose, said Chrétien, is to &;dquo;brand” Canada around the world “as the place to be for knowledge creation as we enter the twenty-first century”, to enable Canadian universities to create research opportunities for the “best and the brightest Canadians”, and to attract “some of the world's best minds” from other countries.

The prime minister failed to mention the cost of the scheme. But Friesen says the total cost of the 2,000 chairs over the first five years will be about Can$300 million (US$200 million).

Support for individual chairs, which could be renewed and revised after five years, will be Can$100,000 for younger scientists and Can$200,000 for more established researchers; most of this would be in salaries. About 35 per cent of the total will go to the biomedical sciences.

“The scale of this is really quite remarkable,” says Friesen. Taken together with previously promised increases, the biomedical research budget will be close to Can$600 million in five years, Friesen says. “Not so long ago it was a Can$230 million commitment.”

The proportion of younger to senior research chairs has not been decided. A committee, including the three research granting council presidents and David Strangway, president and chief executive officer of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, will work out the plan's details.

Louis Siminovitch, university professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, sees the initiative as “a great thing”, but says “it is not clear what the rules are going to be. Salaries are very important for recruiting people,” he adds. “But that's only a very small part of the brain drain. What determines whether a person goes to the United States is research resources.”

Siminovitch says the plan “is a very big step, but it may not be competitive with conditions in the United States. The most important message is that the federal government has awakened to the fact that they've got to do something for research and development.”

Another investment of Can$11 million has also been announced by Strangway. He says it will provide 124 researchers with the infrastructure necessary to conduct 64 research projects in 26 Canadian universities and colleges. Because the Canada Foundation for Innovation funds up to 40 per cent of a project, this investment may trigger a further Can$16.5 million from other funding partners.