“Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage”

Summary Impact for the Post Secondary Education Sector

While the content of the new science and technology strategy continues to be reviewed for its overall impact, some of the key policy initiatives impacting the university sector include:

• Introduction of new business-led networks under the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program in order to bring together government, private, and academic experts from around the world to support applied research in environment, energy, ICT and health priorities, through a competitive, national process.
• Development of new approaches to transfer knowledge and technologies from universities.
• Alignment of the programs and activities of existing organizations to increase commercialization outcomes, i.e. the National Research Council of Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Business Development Bank of Canada will implement a plant to work more effectively together.
• Federal collaboration with the provinces to improve commercialization.
• The targeting of resources to priority areas: environmental science and technologies, natural resources and energy, health and related life sciences and technologies, and information and communication technologies.
• New investments in R&D, including through the granting councils, in areas where Canada has the potential to be a world leader.
• Ensuring that higher-education institutions have the leading-edge research equipment and facilities required to compete with the best in the world.
• Encouraging a supportive higher-education research environment, including through ongoing support to the Indirect Cost of Research program.
• Improving governance measures, including by separating the functions of the Chair and President of the granting councils.  As the government fills vacancies on the councils’ governing bodies, it will seek out more business and community representation to ensure that the composition of granting council governing bodies reflects Canada’s broad economic and national interests.
• Adopting an integrated approach to support academic research in which funding agencies will develop a plan to consolidate, integrate and align programs.
• Ensuring that grant application procedures are competitive and promote international excellence.  As part of their plan to improve program coordination and integration, the granting councils will jointly review their research application procedures and funding allocation processes to identify best practices, in consultation with university and research stakeholders, and make appropriate changes.
• Launching an independent expert panel to report to the President of the Treasury Board on options for transferring non-regulatory federal laboratories to universities or the private sector, and identify up to five laboratories that could be early candidates for transfer.
• Enhancing collaboration with the federal science and technology community and developing improved approaches for fostering research, talent, knowledge transfer, and commercialization among science-based departments and agencies, universities, colleges and the private sector.
• Improving the quality of education for Canadians by: providing stable and predictable funding to provinces and territories for post-secondary education; working with them to develop shared objectives and enhance public accountability; modernizing Canada’s system of student financial assistance; and marketing Canada’s post-secondary system to attract the best foreign students; launching a review of the Canada Student Loans Program, and provide $2 million over two years to promote Canada internationally as a destination of choice for post-secondary education.
• Increasing support for research internships to expose more students to the private sector; encourage more firms to hire science and technology graduates; and increase the number of graduates with both research and business skills and know-how.
• Increasing support for scholarships, including science and engineering, to encourage more youth to pursue advanced degrees in Canada; support outstanding Canadian graduate students who wish to study overseas; and attract outstanding graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to Canada.
• Develop an action plan that will include increasing the number of people pursuing education and careers in science and technology, in consultation with other levels of government and universities.
• Create a new Science, Technology and Innovation Council to provide advice to the Minister on science and technology issues, produce regular state-of-the-nation reports that benchmark Canada’s science and technology performance against international standards of excellence.
• Improve government’s ability to measure and report on the impact of science and technology expenditures.