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Realigning the S&T landscape

The Alberta government is preparing to significantly reduce and realign the number of its research and innovation organizations. The move is in response to growing concerns that the difficulty in navigating the rapidly growing S&T landscape could jeopardize future competitiveness.

Ontario is hoping to attract venture capital (VC) and angel financing to three designated high-tech sectors with a $250-million, five-year fund in which the province will match private sector capital on dollar for dollar basis.

The Ontario Commercialization Network (OCN) is fragmented, too heavily focused on the academic research environment and suffers from a lack of overall governance, says a steering committee report commissioned to provide advice on its future development.

Provincial Budgets

Faced with the unappealing choice of confronting recession-induced pain and investing in the future, the Ontario government appears to have opted for the former, delivering a Budget that’s heavy on fiscal stimulus and light on new S&T or innovation-related investments.

Newfoundland’s precipitous fall back into deficit has allowed the province to fund an eclectic range of S&T initiatives in its most recent Budget. Combatting depressed oil and gas prices and double-digit unemployment, the government still found nearly $40 million to plow into R&D projects ranging from commercialization to agrifood and wildlife.

Knowledge Infrastructure Program

The federal government has made good on its word to move quickly on the deployment of a $2-billion program to help refurbish Canada’s aging university and college infrastructure.

Treasury Board is keeping the $250-million infrastructure fund for federal laboratories under tight wraps in stark contrast to the relatively transparent process now underway for its larger university infrastructure fund.

Second CECR Competition

McMaster Univ and MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates Ltd (MDA) have been awarded $14.8 million over five years to develop and commercialize robotics technology for surgical applications.

Second CECR competition

PARTEQ Innovations has secured federal funding for a centre to exploit so-called green chemistry, as part of the second competition of the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) program.

Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) has announced the results of the thirteenth round of its SD Tech Fund with 16 projects winning a total of $53 million. The projects represent the five priority areas identified in SD Business Cases reports published by SDTC.