Federal support for fundamental science

Universities Canada’s response to the federal government’s review

This review offers an opportunity for Canada to be ambitious: to address the funding gap and enhance our competitive position for global research excellence; to build on existing strengths to boost Canada’s global scientific leadership; and to enable Canada’s researchers to partner with the best minds around the world.

To achieve these goals, Universities Canada makes the following recommendations to the science review panel:

Mobilizing discovery and ideas:

• Position Canada to be a globally competitive research leader and regain third position in the OECD for higher education expenditures on research and development (HERD) as a percentage of GDP by making transformative investments in discovery research through the federal research granting councils.
• Maximize universities’ impact as drivers of innovation by supporting the full costs of university research.
• Strengthen Canada’s capacity to innovate, compete and prosper by providing sustained and predictable annual funding to the Canada Foundation for Innovation to support its current suite of programs, and by mandating the Foundation to lead the development and implementation of a national strategy for big science.
• Remedy gaps in Canada’s research ecosystem through new support mechanisms to promote and enable greater cross-border and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
• Enhance effectiveness and impact by achieving greater alignment and coordination among the granting councils.

Mobilizing talent:

• Enable Canada’s universities to attract, retain and mobilize the world’s top researchers through smart immigration
  policies and practices.
• Advance equity goals at all levels and in all disciplines of our research ecosystem through measures to increase
  the participation of women, Indigenous scholars and other underrepresented groups.
• Mobilize emerging talent by supporting early-career researchers through granting council funding.