Article Type: Generic

A four-person expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) has concluded that the decades-old moratoria on oil and gas activity off the coast of British Columbia can be lifted, providing that regulations are in place to ensure all relevant science gaps are filled before exploration and drilling occur.

The Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE ) is about to realize a long-held aspir-ation of consolidating its role of serving the R&D needs of provincial businesses while linking into an emerging national system of innovation with international reach and influence.

The British Columbia government’s emphasis on business-led solutions for virtually all aspects of economic activity guaranteed that its latest Budget would be devoid of any substantive S&T initiatives.

The long-standing quest by Canada’s colleges and technical institutes to be included in the national system of innovation received a major boost with the commencement of a pilot program by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Funds dedicated to the indirect costs of university research helped push up R&D expenditures in the higher education sector by 12% in FY01-02 to $6.48 billion, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada.

Speech from the Throne

Commercialization was front and centre in the Paul Martin government’s first Speech from the Throne (SFTT) as it laid out the broad strokes of a reinvigorated innovation strategy.

When the new Liberal government gets down to the task of crafting an effective national mechanism for stimulating commercialization, it will have no shortage of models to chose from. Two recent proposals for the commercialization of health research and technology research in general are only the latest bids to secure federal support for a new national commercialization initiative.

The most ambitious information technology (IT) project in federal government history may never be properly completed and utilized unless it is adequately funded and promoted and fully implemented. Even the apparent deadline for full implementation of the Government-On-Line (GOL) is questionable since many of the advanced features of GOL have no specific end date.

The Alberta Research Council (ARC) is seeking to increase its influence in applied research and commercialization in the life sciences with a major capital expansion of its facilities. The plan would cost in excess of $100 million to implement and dovetails with the province’s emerging life sciences strategy, not to mention ARC’s bid to win favour for Innovation Canada, its proposed national commercialization program (R$, December 11/03).

Significantly higher R&D spending in the higher education sector has rescued what is an otherwise gloomy projection on Canadian gross expenditures on R&D (GERD). With the exception of academic R&D, virtually every other performing sector is estimated to be stagnant in 2003, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada.