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A $100-million donation from Canadian mining and oil sands industrialist Seymour Schulich will give graduating high school students in Canada and Israel the chance to compete for scholarships in science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM).

A new report that provides a global comparison of Canada’s tax regime for corporate R&D has been released in advance of the report by Expert Panel Review of Federal Support to Research and Development, which was released today.

Is the Digital Economy Strategy (DES) still a strategy? Does the long delay in its release indicate a lessening in the newly elected Conservative government’s commitment to boosting Canada’s role in all things digital? These are just two of the questions that have been swirling around in policy circles as the S&T community waits for the long-awaited DES to emerge from the Ottawa bureaucracy into the light of day.

The future of the Canada-California Strategic Innovation Partnership (CCSIP) appears to be hanging in the balance, with no new projects or funding from either side forcing the organization into a period of hibernation.

Fragmented policy landscape cited

This year’s Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC) could be Canada’s best chance in years to create a central resource for S&T policy coordination, skills development and research into science, technology and innovation.

Zarlink Semiconductor Inc has become the latest homegrown Canadian high-tech firm to be sold to a foreign buyer. The Ottawa-based, virtually fables semiconductor firm is being purchased by Microsemi Corp, Aliso Viejo CA, for US$525 million.

ArcticNet has received $67.3 million to implement a second seven-year phase of operations as one of the most successful of the classic Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE). The funding for 2011-2018 represents a 47% increase over ArcticNet’s first seven years as an NCE, allowing it to launch 12 new research projects focused on Inuit health, education and culture and two new research chairs while renewing 22 existing projects.

Range of technologies being developed

Canada’s largest oil sands producers have agreed to share intellectual property (IP) for technologies they’re developing to reduce and clean wet tailings generated during surface mining as part of a new consortium that promises to inject at least $90 million annually into R&D.

Victim of bad timing?

Precarn Inc is ceasing operations 24 years after being launched to stimulate R&D and commercialization in the areas of robotics and intelligent systems. The program is being killed just one year following its second proposal to expand its scope to information and communications technologies (ICT) and align itself with the much anticipated Digital Economy Strategy (DES).

Fiscal restraint, R&D review panel cited

A cost-cutting strategic operating review and the pending report from the federal R&D review panel are producing a chill in the pre-Budget submissions to government, with fewer organizations and individuals proposing significant new spending for R&D and innovation.