Ministers make the most of latest chair awards

Liberal Cabinet ministers fanned out across the country this week to announce the latest awards under the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program, yet another indication that a spring election is a near certainty.

Several separate municipal and provincial announcements were made, in addition to an overall announcement at the Univ of Ottawa by Industry minister Lucienne Robillard for $138.3 million in funding for 137 chairs. The awards were augmented with $16.7 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to provide infrastructure support for the new chairholders.

The CRC program has now awarded 1164 or 58.2% of the 2000 chairs and $900 million in funding originally announced in the 2000 Budget (R$, March 17/00). How the chairs are allocated according to gender, region and granting agency is closely monitored. With the latest awards, the breakdowns show that women still account for less than one fifth of chairholders.

Men hold 906 chairs compared to 204 held by women, accounting for 23% of the total. The success rate for women is even lower when the chairs are separated into senior and junior tiers. Among the 605 senior Tier I chairholders, just 77 or 13% are held by women. The rate is substantially better for women in the Tier II chairs, holding 127 or 23% of the 528 awarded to date.

The CRC program is considered a key tool for the attraction and retention of research talent, and the numbers of chairholders coming from outside of Canada are steadily improving.

Of the 1164 now awarded, 843 come from within Canada. The compares to 161 (14%) from foreign countries and 160 (14%) who are expatriate Canadians who have returned to take up positions at home.

The CRC program is overseen by a steering committee comprised of the presidents of the three granting agencies and the CFI and Industry Canada’s DM. The breakdown shows that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council has 531 chairs (46%), followed by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (374/32%) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (259/22%).

R$