TVB Associates Inc.

With the recent announcement of $160M to boost funding for “nationally significant” science facilities, Trudeau has continued to position himself as more responsive to the needs of the science community than Harper was.

Author: Daniel Banks, President, TVB Associates Inc.
Originally published: Canadian Science Policy Centre (May 2019)
Image: CFI-funded national research facilities

Harper closed the Office of the National Science Advisor.

Trudeau began with appointing Kirsty Duncan as a full Minister of Science and mandated her to reinstate a national science advisor role.

Harper invested in industry-motivated research, but scientists in other areas felt under-valued, leading to protests against cutbacks and restrictions on speaking about their research.

Minister Duncan commissioned the Fundamental Science Review to help the government realize its promises to take a different approach to science.

Since the Review reported in 2017, Duncan has been working through implementation of its many recommendations for policy changes and for over $1B per year in funding increases.

Duncan’s announcement last week was the latest implementation, increasing the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s funding share of the operations of seven major research facilities from 40% to 60%.

Major research facilities, such as the research icebreaker pictured on the back of the fifty-dollar bill, provide unique capabilities that are part of a 21st century scientific toolkit.

Since these facilities are too expensive to be used by only a few research institutions, they are shared by hundreds of researchers across Canada, one of the reasons they are considered “nationally significant.”

But Canada lacks a coherent system for overseeing the major funding decisions required for creating and operated them.

As a result, the scientists that need these facilities waste a lot of time and energy on lobbying.

Politicians, in turn, are not qualified to judge the scientific merit of investing $100M in a major telescope compared to a big particle physics experiment.

In fact, sometimes new facilities have been built before the operating funds were found – a recipe for a national embarrassment.

Some major facilities still fall through jurisdictional gaps because no agency is responsible for them.

Such gaps were one factor leading to the loss of Canada’s neutron beam facilities, which relied on the NRU reactor in Chalk River.

Neutron beam facilities are national shared tools used for a wide range of materials research.

For example, researchers use neutron beams to answer questions about Alzheimer’s disease and vitamin E, develop clean energy storage for eliminating vehicle emissions, or improve reliability of our aging pipelines.

All other advanced nations have neutron beam facilities because they are versatile and cannot be replaced by other tools.

When the National Research Council (NRC) was restructured in 2012, operating such a facility for scientists from all over Canada was not aligned with its new mission.

So, NRC divested its neutron beam facility to Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, which kept it open for several years, but it had no mandate in this research field beyond the NRU reactor’s closure in 2018.

No agency was left with the responsibility to obtain replacement facilities.

In response, a working group supported by 15 research organizations was formed to lobby the government to establish a new framework for this scientific capability.

The need for lobbying, when scientists would much rather compete with each other on merit, is a symptom of the wider problem that could be solved by collecting the major facilities under one comprehensive oversight process, as the Fundamental Science Review recommended.

The Review’s recommendation parallels the new Strategic Science Fund in Budget 2019, which is for a second set of science organizations that have operated outside normal funding channels: Genome Canada, and Brain Canada, for example.

The Strategic Science Fund collects all these organizations under one competitive funding program in which they will be evaluated by independent experts according to fixed criteria – no more lobbying required.

The increase in funding announced last week signals that the federal government accepts its leadership responsibility for major facilities, and could be a step toward the Review’s recommendation on their oversight.

Following landmark investments in the 2018 budget in response to Canada’s Fundamental Science Review, anyone who expected major new investments in fundamental science in 2019 was sure to be disappointed. This is not to say there’s nothing to be thankful for – indeed, there are a few additional investments and policy changes that will help students and promote equity, diversity and inclusion in the science community. Since there are no claw-backs to the multi-year increases announced in 2018, many scientists will experience increases to their funding in 2019.

Author: Daniel Banks, President, TVB Associates Inc.
Originally published: Canadian Science Policy Centre (March 2019)

From a science policy perspective, which is about how science is managed, as well as funded, the biggest change may be one item that had no dollar amount attached.

Budget 2019 announces a “new approach” for funding so-called “third-party science and research.” The Fundamental Science Review defined “third-party science entities” as those operating outside the jurisdiction of NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC, CFI. Genome Canada, Mitacs, and Brain Canada are a few examples.

The Review raised concerns, not with the quality of these organizations’ output, but with how they are each governed as one-offs, via term-limited contribution agreements with ISED. Ad hoc governance arrangements have been needed until now because these organizations don’t fit within the existing programs of the granting councils. Lack of a suitable program required scientists to lobby for funds, rather than participate in peer-reviewed competitions. Over time, the Review warned, this approach could “allow select groups of researchers to sidestep the intensity of peer review competitions, and facilitate unchecked mission drift as third-party partner organizations shift their mandates to justify their continuation.”

The new approach announced in Budget 2019 is to establish a “Strategic Science Fund” that will oversee investments in ISED’s collection of these agencies using a “principles-based framework” based on competitive, transparent processes. The framework will be applied by an independent expert panel to arrive at advice on funding for these organizations. Although the funding decisions will still be made by the Government, this will be a welcome improvement over the vagaries of political lobbying for funds.

There was no funding announced for the Strategic Science Fund. Indeed, no new funding would be needed if the intention is to pool funds from each third-party organization as their respective contribution agreements expire.

The Strategic Science Fund could be a precedent for another portion of the science community that faces similar challenges: so-called Big Science, or Major Research Facilities (MRFs), such as TRIUMF, SNOLAB, Ocean Networks Canada, the Canadian Light Source, and large facilities for astronomy or neutron scattering. In the absence of a systematic means of overseeing Canada’s portfolio of these shared national resources, an array of oversight mechanisms have been created for these facilities on an ad hoc basis, much like the case for third-party research organizations. The Fundamental Science Review was the latest in a string of reports that have pointed problems with this ad hoc approach, stretching back at least 20 years.

Stewardship of Canada’s MRFs has improved following the introduction of the CFI’s Major Science Initiatives Fund in 2012, and the expansion of its mandate to include more facilities under its program in 2014. Nonetheless, there are still many facilities that are not covered by this Fund. No agency has responsibility for the entire portfolio of MRFs to allow it to plan for the creation of new MRFs as others wind-down, or provide predictable funding over the life-cycle of an MRF. Other MRFs still fall through jurisdictional cracks, where no federal agency is clearly responsible for them. Such jurisdictional cracks were one contributing factor in the loss of Canada’s neutron scattering facilities in 2018.

Thankfully, there are indications from organizations such the CFI, ISED and the Office of the Chief Science Advisor that they are collaborating to consider a new approach to managing Canada’s portfolio of MRFs. With the leadership that the CFI has taken to fund operations of MRFs so far, and the Government’s commitment to provide much larger and more stable funding for the CFI in 2023 (announced in the 2018 budget), I believe the CFI is best positioned to take on the role of managing Canada’s portfolio of MRFs.

While Budget 2019 might not be remembered for its science investments, it does announce significant policy changes to improve governance of ad hoc science organizations — changes that set a precedent for a coherent and consistent approach to the funding and oversight of Canada’s Major Research Facilities as well.