Agricultural research centres at Swift Current, Sask., and Morden, Man., will receive approximately $5.6 million in federal funding over the next two years to pay for facility upgrades.
The funding announcements are part of the federal government’s two-year, $40 billion economic action plan announced earlier this year.
The plan, a key component of the 2009 federal budget, was aimed at stimulating domestic spending and helping Canada’s economy weather the global economic recession.
Approximately $250 million will be used to upgrade federal laboratories and research facilities across Canada.
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In Swift Current, $5.34 million will be spent between now and March 31, 2011, to replace a 700 sq. metre greenhouse facility. It will allow researchers to ensure the introduction of new food and feed products to the Canadian marketplace. Construction is expected to create as many as 58 jobs.
In Morden, about $250,000 will be used to update outdated growing rooms developing new crop varieties. The rooms will allow researchers to develop new wheat varieties that are resistant to a new strain of stem rust known as UG99.
Other federal research facilities receiving funding include:
- A Canadian Food Inspection Agency lab in Calgary will receive $3.4 million.
- A CFIA testing laboratory in Saskatoon used to test for veterinary drug residues and parasites in meat and animals will get $4.9 million.
- A CFIA lab in Lethbridge will get upgrades worth $3.5 million.
- Natural Resources Canada’s Northern Forestry Research Centre in Edmonton will receive $7.5 million.
- An Agriculture Canada crops and livestock research cente in Charlottetown, P.E.I will receive $5.4 million in upgrades.
- An Agriculture Canada potato research centre in Fredericton, N.B., will receive $500,000.
- A Geological Survey of Canada lab in Calgary will get $7.2 million in upgrades.
- Agriculture Canada’s food research centre in Guelph, Ont., will receive $1.15 million.
- Water research labs in Guelph will get upgrades worth $6.6 million.
