A delegation of agriculture and veterinary college deans was on Parliament Hill last week with a sombre message for the federal government.
Funding cuts are seriously eroding agricultural research, they said. They also damage the agriculture education system and Canada’s ability to keep its best agriculture students and scientists from heading south.
“Our universities have been suffering from pernicious under-funding,” Deborah Buszard, dean of agriculture at Montreal’s McGill University, told MPs May 6.
And while universities and education are provincial responsibilities, Ontario Agricultural College dean Rob McLaughlin said federal funding has been a key component. “It is declining.”
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Along with deans from colleges across Canada, Buszard presented academic horror stories of research funding not available, corporate influence over research priorities because of federal funding policy, and students and staff leaving Canada for the wealthier confines of American labs.
In the United States, salaries are higher and research funding far exceeds what is available in Canada, they told the House of Commons agriculture committee. The disparity is taking its toll.
University of Manitoba agriculture dean Jim Elliot said his faculty started the year with 85 academics. “I have lost five of them to the United States in the past year.”
Added Jean-Claude Dufour, dean of agriculture at Laval University in Quebec City: “We lost seven of our best students going there this year.”
It is a question of university funding and money available to researchers for their work.
They said the lack of funding also means physical facilities such as labs and equipment are wearing down.
The education leaders also took aim at Ottawa’s four-year-old program of reducing direct research spending but using money to leverage matching funds from private industry.
It is called the matching investment initiative, announced in 1995, and Ottawa has been promoting it as a way to increase research funding. A $35 million federal fund can attract $35 million in private investment.
Private investors
However, the deans said this gives the private investors an increased voice in research priorities and usually their interest is a more immediate product that can quickly get to market and earn returns on investment.
Buszard said while universities welcome more private investment, they worry that the emphasis has switched away from long-term research, which lays the groundwork for future breakthroughs.
“The competition of interests diverts money away from curiosity-driven, long-term research.”
Elliot said Canada will pay the price years from now.
There was a three decade delay between the 1950s discovery of the DNA genetic building block and the 1980s use of DNA in genetic engineering.
“There tends to be a 30-year gap,” he said. Starving long-term research now for short-term commercial research interests will haunt Canada years from now when it falls behind other countries.
