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After quietly toiling away for 18 months developing a work plan and commissioning studies, the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee (CBAC) has issued its first annual report and is planning public consultations on two of the five special projects identified last year as priority items.

Preliminary data from Statistics Canada’s latest biotechnology survey contains compelling evidence that the various industries which comprise the sector are growing rapidly and beginning to move from R&D to commercialization.

The National Research Council (NRC) took advantage of its annual Outstanding Achievement Awards dinner to announce the largest single royalty payment ever received by a government agency for royalties on sales for an invention.

CIHR appoints members to Institute Advisory Boards

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has reached another key milestone with the appointment of a full slate of Institute Advisory Boards (IAB) members to its virtual institutes.

A new Ottawa centre to conduct stem cell and gene therapy research has received commitments of more than $35 million from a variety of funding sources, helping to build critical mass in the city’s burgeoning health research sector.

The Quebec government has released the most comprehensive policy document on science and technology (S&T) in its history and the first to be released in 19 years, as it maps out its vision for the future to make Quebec a world hub of the knowledge economy.

For supporters of new and enhanced measures to stimulate the New Economy, the Speech From the Throne and the Prime Minister’s official response contained all the right sign posts and expressions. From their prominently positioned sections on innovation and their repetition of Finance minister Paul Martin’s pledge to double federal R&D spending by 2010, both addresses forcefully made the case for increased investments in innovation and science and technology (S&T) as the key to the nation’s future prosperity.

An ambitious initiative to conduct research into the potential for biomass as an alternative source for energy, chemicals and materials is turning up the heat on potential federal funding sources to exploit Canada’s so-called Green Advantage.

Iter Canada is awaiting the federal Cabinet’s decision on whether to support Canada’s bid to host the massive Iter prototype fusion reactor and appoint a negotiator to carry the proposal to the international body that will ultimately choose the winning site.

Iter Canada has sent a letter to the Auditor General of Canada (AG) protesting its depiction of the Canadian bid to host the a fusion research facility as an example of a Big Science project requiring federal funding.