- © 2008 Canadian Medical Association
The first 7 were chosen by apparent whim. The new 11 have been selected by a hybrid new process, in which a measure of academic peer review was utilized to identify strengths and weaknesses of proposals but a committee of industrialists weighed the relative merits of competing applications for a new $163 million pot.
All told, the federal Progressive Conservative government continued to brand itself as a innovative dispenser of science monies as it unveiled the winners of a recent competition to create new Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research.
Like the predecessor 7 (CMAJ 2007;176[10]:1406-7), the new 11 (Box 1) were selected outside of the standard process that the granting councils have traditionally used to determine which initiatives should be funded, in which scientific peers rate all applications against one another on the basis of excellence. Instead, the government opted to have a private sector advisory board weigh the relative merits of projects “because the focus was on commercialization,” explains Networks of Centres of Excellence Senior Program Manager Jean Saint-Vil.
Some 110 applications were made under the competition to create centres in 4 designated “priority” areas: environmental science and technologies; natural resources and energy; health and related life sciences and technologies; and information and communications technologies.
Those were culled to 25 that were reviewed by standard peer review panels. But they did not rate the applications, Vil says. “The process was for them to really focus on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each proposal.”
The industrialists then weighed in with their recommendations, which were forwarded to the program steering committee for final approval. It was comprised of the presidents of the 3 granting councils and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, as well as the deputy minister of Industry Canada.
The private sector advisory board was chaired by Canadian Chamber of Commerce President and former Conservative cabinet minister Perrin Beatty. Members included: Amika Mobile Corporation President Sue Abu-Hakima; Bell University Laboratories Director Alan Bernardi; Syncrude Canada Ltd. former president James E.C. Carter; Fractal Capital Group President J. Haig deB. Farris; GlaxoSmithKline Inc. Director of Basic Research and Genetics Kevin O'Brien Fehr; Syncrude Canada Ltd former vice-president of technology project development and research Fred Hemphill; Innovatech Quebec former president Francine Laurent; IBM plant Bromont Director Raymond Leduc; Environmental Bio-detection Products Inc. President Donald Lush; Provincial Aerospace Group of Companies Vice-President Marketing Keith Stoodley and Tissue Regeneration Therapeutics Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Turner.