Lewis E. Kay is a professor at the University of Toronto who uses the tools of physics to study the molecules of life. A Canada Gairdner International Award Winner and an officer of the Order of Canada, he returned to Canada after graduate and postdoctoral training in the United States 35 years ago.
These past several months have ushered chaos and uncertainty into a world that can ill-afford to deal with human-made disasters. Donald Trump’s efforts to destroy a strong, successful and decades-old partnership between the United States and Canada will undoubtedly lead to economic crises in our country. To our credit, Canadians have responded with unanimity and solidarity against the existential threats that are being made.
These responses are important. But they are not enough.
In these times of crisis, we must ensure that the basic engines that drive our country are protected. Science is one such engine, and Canada has made major scientific contributions on the world stage. Take, as one example, the wonder drug insulin, which was isolated by Frederick Banting, Charles Best and John Macleod at the University of Toronto, and subsequently purified by University of Alberta biochemist James Collip while on sabbatical at U of T. Or consider the development of lipid technologies by UBC’s Peter Cullis to ensure that the RNA used in COVID vaccines is protected from degradation inside human cells, or the work of Dan Drucker in Toronto, whose pioneering studies of peptide hormones has led to therapeutics for diabetes and obesity. Canada is also a world leader in research on AI and machine learning, culminating with the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to U of T’s Geoffrey Hinton.
One thought is to capitalize on this scientific excellence, and the uncertainties south of the border, to recruit top American talent to our country and bring back Canadians working in American labs. In principle, this sounds like an excellent idea, except for one detail: There are insufficient funds for those of us who are already here.
Canada’s R&D spending consistently falls below the G7 average. Funding for scientific research from the main governmental bodies that provide support to my laboratory, for instance – the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) – is inadequate. The lack of monies has translated into a success rate of between 15.3 to 17.2 per cent for the past three CHIR grant competitions, and even if one is lucky enough to secure a grant (and typically several are needed to support a thriving laboratory), the standard across-the-board budget cut of 24 per cent from funding levels recommended by grant review panels to stretch these limited dollars to fund more proposals ensures that the allocated monies will be insufficient.
A lack of adequate funding has encouraged some of Canada’s top scientists to secure resources from American funding agencies. But should the current U.S. administration end this practice, there will be even more pressure on Canada’s already burdened science funding system, even without the addition of foreign talent.
It would be most prudent to prioritize retaining the best talent in Canada before we think about recruiting from elsewhere. Recognizing that top Canadians perform at the level of our best counterparts elsewhere is critical, but unfortunately the messages sent by our government often contradict this notion. For example, the Canada Research Chairs program – established in 2000 to retain top academic talent, including in the sciences – essentially only provides funds to the universities for faculty salary support and a relatively small amount for research, typically $40,000 to $60,000 each year for a period of seven years. In contrast, the Canada 150 Research Chairs program – a one-time initiative set up in 2017 to celebrate the sesquicentennial of Confederation – was ironically not made available for Canada’s best domestic scientists; it was reserved for recruiting top-tier researchers from abroad, with top offers of $1-million each year for a duration of seven years.
We as a country must realize that with the recent surge in patriotism comes the responsibility to better ourselves from within. We need to more effectively nurture the talent that is already in place and to ensure that this talent is given every opportunity to succeed. In 2020-2021, the budget for the U.S. National Institutes of Health was 40 times larger than for its Canadian counterpart, the CIHR, even though the population of the U.S. was only ninefold higher. While the current U.S. administration may not value research in the same way as before, a largely made-in-America blueprint exists for how to do great science that leads to advances that will ensure a better future. It starts with funding.
If Ottawa were to increase monies for research by approximately 15 per cent per year for the next five years, CIHR’s budget would double – at an average cost of approximately $290-million per year, or 0.05 per cent of the country’s budgetary expenses for 2024-2025.
Such an investment would be transformative, and it would surely rekindle the hope that I once had about the opportunity to do great science in my country – a hope that lured me back to Canada after my training in the U.S. was completed over three decades ago.