D Boost Promised For Canada

OTTAWA -Scientists are cautiously optimistic that Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney will deliver on a promise to spend an additional $1.3 billion Canadian ($ 1.014 billion U.S.) on federal science and technology initiative over the next five years. Mulroney made the announcement to 200 business and university leaders last month in Toronto at a federally sponsored conference called to solicit their advice or developing a new national science and technology strategy. A portion of the funds Will help establish a program of centers of excellence on Canadian university campuses and a system of scholarships in science, engineering and related disciplines for some 2,500 undergraduates each year. Skeptics have suggested that the bulk of the money Will be spent only if the prime minister's Progressive Conservative government is re-elected. An election must be held by September 1989. They also pointed out that Mulroney has not kept his promise to double what was referred to as collective spending on R&D as a proportion of GNP When the promise was made, six months before his party won a landslide election victory in September 1984, R&D spending stood at 1.3 percent of GNP It remains at that level today. Observers also noted that Mulroney's speech referred only indirectly to last year's recommendations, from a committee of the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology to double the funds of the national granting councils which provide the bulk of federal R&D funds to university and industry researchers. John Reid, senior advisor and director of the Canadian Advanced Technology Association, sees the proposal as good news after two recent setbacks. The government in effect has reduced R&;D incentives by about $100 million a year through changes in the Investment Tax Credits program, he said and dried up venture capital by making partnership roles more restrictive. "Realism must prevail in any discussion to increase federal government spending dramatically in the very short term," Mulroney said in his address. "It is counter productive to spend borrowed government money in a manner that will cause interest rates to rise, thereby severely limiting the capacity of the private sector to participate in national endeavors in this area. "We must and we will devote more government funds to science and technology," he said, "but in a sensible and productive way." Mulroney provided few details on the proposed programs. He said the new centers would "establish net works of researchers and scientists across the country to conduct world-class research in areas crucial to Canada's long-term competitiveness." He said an independent jury of internationally recognized experts will be formed to advise the government on the proposals. The approach mirrors the one adopted by the Ontario government and the privately sponsored Canadian Institute for Advance Research. In fact, some scientists fear that Ontario universities may get shortchanged in the new federal program because the province has already begun to set up its own centers of excellence. > Geraldine Kenny-Wallace chairman of the Science Council Canada, a government advisory body, applauded Mulroney's announcement but said it doesn't go far enough. Larkin Kerwin, president of the federal governments largest R&D organization the National Research Council of Canada reacted more positively. "It is one of the more important injections of funds into science and technology in the last few years he said. "I believe it will help condition the public to the needs of injecting more funds and to the urgency of greatly improving Canada's R&D performance." Kerwin estimated that the proposed programs for centers of excellence and scholarships will cost only about $300 million of th $1.3 billion promised. "There's still $1 billion to be distributed," he said. "Presumably the granting councils will get some of that." There is no dearth of candidates for the money, Kerwin said. He cited Canada's participation in the U.S. space station, a proposed facility to generate elementary particles and a desire by government research laboratories to respond to its community problems, for example the recent testing of toxic mussels from the Eastern seaboard. Mulroney noted that although Canada ranks second to the United States in the per capita number of college graduates in the work force we have one of the lowest rates of scientists and researchers, only 90 per 100,000 population, as compared with 140 in Britain, 150 in West Germany, 240 in Japan and 280 in the U.S." Spurgeon is a freelance writer in Ottawa

D Boost Promised For Canada

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