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Increased R&D spending in the business sector — particularly the service industry — helped push up the number of R&D personnel active in Canada to 199,060, a 5.0% increase over 2003 and up nearly 30% since 1990.

Canada and China have signed a Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement that includes a joint fund to support scientific and technological innovation and industrial cooperation. The agreement was signed January 16 as part of a high-level delegation to China led by Finance minister James Flaherty and International Trade minister David Emerson.

MDS Sciex, a division of MDS Inc, will become part of a larger new business unit with the acquisition of Molecular Devices Corp (MDC), Sunnyvale CA. The US$615-million cash acquisition — due to close by the end of June — is expected give a major boost to MDS’s profitability by 2008 and significantly strengthen the Toronto-based company’s presence in the mass spectrometry sector.

The Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) program officially expired at the end of 2006 after 11 volatile and often controversial years, but not before the government unleashed a flurry of announcements in late December to clear its backlog of previous approved projects.

The future of Canada’s federal laboratories has been placed under the public policy microscope while the Harper administration ponders the feasibility of transferring some facilities to the academic sector.

Program details promised by April

A new $230-million fund for energy R&D and the demonstration of clean energy technologies is being established as part of the Harper government’s hastily assembled environmental policy.

CFI: $78M; Matching: $90M; NSERC: $10M

The high performance computing (HPC) community has taken a major step forward with the awarding of $78 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to establish a network of mid-range research facilities, realizing a major component of its long-range vision to become a world leader in computationally based research.

On the road for consultations

Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation (MRI) has unveiled its long-awaited research and innovation strategic plan as a first step towards developing a government-wide strategy to enhance the province’s innovative capacity and global competitiveness.

After 11 years at the helm, Dr Ronald Worton is stepping aside as head of the Ottawa Health Research Institute (OHRI), ushering in a new era under the leadership of Dr Duncan Stewart. Stewart will arrive at the Ottawa region’s premier health research institute on July 1 to continue a restructuring that will see OHRI boost its research expertise in several more narrowly defined disease areas and increase its emphasis on translational research.

Canada’s biggest advocacy group for health research has endorsed a key House committee recommendation to increase the budget of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) by $350 million over three years.