Canada Foundation for Innovation pumps $363 million into 214 research infrastructure projects

The federal government's efforts to rebuild Canada's research infrastructure for the 21st century took another major step forward with the latest award announcements from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). While the infusion of new capital will be welcomed by the research community, the new facilities given the green light are certain to escalate the call for even more new funding to cover increased research overhead costs. The latest round of 214 projects entails a new investment of $363 million and brings the total CFI funding disbursed to date to $839.4 million. Combined with the cash and in-kind that must accompany every project, the CFI has now injected more than $2 billion into the university research system.

The awards contained in the July 26 announcement represent the largest single disbursement of CFI funds since the program became operational in 1998, exceeding the $320 million awarded in the last major competition. The CFI plans three more major competitions for approximately $300 million each at 18-month intervals, with the last to be announced in late 2004.

"I continue to be staggered by this. There's been a $2.1-billion investment into the system so far," says CFI president Dr David Strangway. "Who would have dreamed of this two or three years ago. It will have a major impact on the national R&D effort but a lot of other countries are in this area as well."

The largest single project in terms of funding is for the Centre for Integrated Genomics at the BC Cancer Research Centre. It received $27.8 million in CFI funding towards the $82 million earmarked for the 22,000-sq-m facility. Once completed, it will be Canada's first fully integrated cancer research facility and will contain eight specialty laboratories dedicated to various aspects of cancer research. That includes the Genome Sequence Centre which will anchor the melding of genome science with other cancer research and clinical care. The Centre, which is currently located in a converted bakery and warehouse, is old and overcrowded, with yeast embedded in the walls preventing much molecular research from being conducted there. Construction of the new facility is slated to begin late next year.

Another project of note is the Univ of Montreal-led national network of Research Data Centres, which received $5.3 million. Originally a joint project between Statistics Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the six remote centres will permit university, government and private sector researchers to mine StatsCan's longitudinal data including data on education, labour and income, population health, worker displacement and youth in transition. Spearheading the CFI proposal was Dr Paul Bernard, a sociologist at the Univ of Montreal and chair of the original StatsCan/SSHRC working group that launched the initiative.

"It's fairly complicated but essentially Statistics Canada will staff the centres and users will be given temporary status with Statistics Canada," says Strangway, adding that there was spirited competition among universities over who would house the centres.

The bulks of the funds allocated in the latest competition comes from the massive Innovation Fund. It accounted for $354.3 million for 190 projects, representing a success rate of 39%.

"People are really thinking about their vision of the future," says Strangway, noting that the last major competition generated $1 billion worth of proposals. "There were more proposals that fitted the vision of how we can do things that didn't have a chance before the CFI was created."

The remainder of the funds was allocated through the College Research Development Fund ($8.5 million for 21 projects at 15 institutions) and the University Research Development Fund ($714,000 for three projects). The funding announcement for the New Opportunities Fund was made in June and provided $10.1 million for 67 projects at 24 universities (R$, June 9/00).

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