By: Dr. Bruce Sells
CFBS Executive Director

During the past year (1998-99) Paul Hough resigned to take up a position as Vice President of Biotech-Canada. He left CFBS in September of 1998 and a new Executive Director was appointed in April of 1999. Paul had been a very effective lobbyist in persuading Government to be more generous to the research community. He succeeded in developing partnerships with other National Organizations to create a common approach and thus increase the impact of the argument being made to increase research funding.

A major partnership has been established between CFBS and CCR (Canadian Council For Research) a grouping of organizations and Societies to discuss strategies on how to approach Government. Over the past two years the efforts of this lobbying have born fruit and the recent Federal Budgets have 1) begun to replenish the coffers of the granting Councils, 2) have established the Millennium Fund to support students, 3) extended funding of the NCE's (National Centres of Excellence), 4) created the CFI (Canadian Foundation for Innovation) and 5) encouraged the establishment of the CIHR (Canadian Institute for Health-Research ).

These have all been welcomed outcomes of our lobbying efforts and should provide a good beginning for improving the vitality of the research community in this Country. At the same time it is well to recognize that to keep our highly trained personnel at home even greater effort will be needed on the financial front, given the international competition, to provide the required support for the new technological directions if we are to compete globally.

What Lies Ahead?

While the scientific community is pleased that Government has seen fit to focus its attention on the importance of scientific research through the increased allocations in the Federal budget there are, nevertheless, a number of issues which need to be addressed to ensure that the new programs presented by Government are effective over the long term. Three of the initiatives supported by the recent Federal budget depend upon partnerships with Industry. Since we believe that the benefits of University-based research should, whenever possible, accrue to the Canadian taxpayer, we understand that interaction with the commercial world is essential for this to happen. We, nevertheless, feel uneasy that this interaction may gradually become such that investigator-drive (curiosity based -research) is reduced in importance.

The second area of concern relates to the funding of universities which generates 65% of Canadian scientific publications, accounts for 31 % of Canada's R&D personnel and performs 22% of all Canadian R&D. With universities under extreme financial pressure the ability of universities to maintain their physical plants and the "core-infrastructure" for research activity has been severely compromised. It has been estimated that the indirect costs represent about 65% of the personnel costs in funds provided by grants provided by granting agencies -where no overhead is allowed. Furthermore, capital depreciation is not included in this calculation of 65 %. Another calculation has estimated indirect/overhead costs at 33% of total direct costs. In U.S. institutions overhead costs are negotiated and range from 40% to 70% with a variety of components considered as indirect costs of the research portfolio. Whatever the method of calculation the indirect costs of Research support obtained from the granting Councils are a further burden which universities must bear and which diminish further their capacity to respond to both the student and research needs of the university community.

It appears imperative, therefore, that we in CFBS need to address the following important items:

1. Governments should in their funding of research, attempt to maintain a balanced approach in the support of targeted and investigator-initiated research.
2. In the Canadian Health & Social Transfers (CHST) to the provinces, the Federal Government develop a line-item for Post-secondary Education in much the same way as it was created for Health. In this way the chronic under-funding of universities could be addressed allowing them to deal with infrastructure needs and capital depreciation not covered by CFI.
3. Given the administrative and financial burden that research-active universities incur, allowances should be introduced in the Federal Budget to provide the Granting Councils with funds to deal with over-head expenses.

How Can CFBS Be More Effective?

A challenge which faces CFBS in its attempts to lobby Government to be more supportive of the research enterprise is to provide a united front of Biological/Life Sciences organizations. The MPs react much more favourably if they believe that the whole community is speaking with one voice. The past decade has seen the departure from the CFBS ranks several of our very important Societies. This departure is serious since it reduces the impact of our message to Government and secondly, compromises from a financial point of view our ability to get our message out since they longer provide the funding required for our lobbying effort. One extremely important goal for the next couple of years is to enact measures which will satisfy the needs of those Societies who were once part of CFBS and who have withdrawn. At the same time, CFBS should become more aggressive in trying to recruit scientists from Industry. Given the growth in the pharmaceutical industry and the number of new biotech companies recently formed, our efforts should not be restricted only to the academic world.

Discussions with Canadian scientists have reinforced the belief that many of us have had for a long time, namely, that the type of Annual Meeting we have now held for many years has to be changed. Those involved in this meeting over the years have all put a great deal of effort into its organization and have attracted outstanding speakers for the symposia and plenary sessions. It appears, however, that the style which we have developed is no longer attractive to the majority of our membership. CFBS is not unique in having to face this problem. FASEB in the U.S.A., which used to be "THE" meeting to attend in decades past, no longer is the "only game in town". Currently there is much greater interest in more focused types of meetings where the individual scientist can bring home the maximum amount of information for her/his scientific dollar spent. We need, then, to rethink how we can satisfy the need of our Biological/Life Science Community. What appears clear is that the format of the meeting needs extensive modification. Action on this front is required immediately. If we are successful in accomplishing the needed changes we may have in part solved some of the reasons why several of our larger Societies are no longer part of CFBS.

Finally, an added benefit of our being able to present an exciting meeting -or series of meetings- each year is that we would solve the fiscal problems which prevent us from being as effective as we need to be in developing public awareness of the role of scientists in Society and thus have the public/taxpayers become our advocates.