The usual suspects had the usual complaints about funding shortfalls after Finance Minister John Manley tabled his first budget Feb. 18, but complaints from Canada's medical researchers were few and far between.
In fact, even though some of the budget's major initiatives concerned health research, they received scant mention because they are not as sexy as, say, new coverage for catastrophic drug costs or a new diagnostic equipment fund.
But these initiatives should come as no surprise. “Building the knowledge economy” has been a preoccupation for Manley since his days in the Science and Technology portfolio. His first budget includes $1.7 billion over 3 years for research and innovation, money that will have a major impact on universities and research facilities, and will directly affect medical schools and teaching hospitals.
First, there is more money for graduate students, with a promise of a scholarship program to support 2000 master's-level students and 2000 doctoral students each year. This 70% increase in scholarship funding should help reduce the number of graduate students and researchers who leave Canada for the US. In addition, there will be a 10% increase worth $125 million per year for Canada's 3 granting councils, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
That delighted President Alan Bernstein, who notes that CIHR's annual budget has grown from $360 million to $617 million since June 2000.
Manley has also opened the country's wallet to support research that will help Canada maintain a world-class cadre of medical researchers. He has allocated $500 million to the Canada Foundation for Innovation for state-of-the-art research facilities and $75 million to Genome Canada. At a time of intense international competition for top-flight researchers, Canada has become an attractive country in which to do research. Bernstein says bluntly that the additional funding will allow Canada “to attract and retain the best and the brightest.”
Although these new investments in research and innovation went largely unnoticed outside the research community, the pace of spending on research capacity in the past 5 years has been truly staggering: a six-fold increase since 1998, from $400 million per year to a total of $2.3 billion.
John Manley's effort was labelled “a health care budget,” and with good reason. The health-related transfers to the provinces accounted for over half of the 11.5% increase in program spending in what some quickly labelled “an old-style, big-spending” financial roadmap. However, even though this health care package will probably play an important role in sustaining medicare, the investments it has made in the knowledge economy will help ensure the system's quality. — Charlotte Gray, Ottawa