Whether you are a student or a scientist, you are no doubt familiar with the traditional funding agency for the natural sciences in Canada - NSERC. However,if your research leads you into the realm of applied research, you will inevitably begin to be exposed to a wider, more complicated world of industry-partnered R&D. Support for this kind of work can come from companies themselves (often in the form of direct technical service agreements between the company and your lab), dollar-matching programs at the federal and provincial levels (administered by the traditional agencies of NSERC, CIHR, ORF, et cetera), or more foreign (to those of us in the academy) support programs provided directly to corporations themselves (the "SR&ED" or "shread" credits have been a huge part of this for years). This latter support stream is deep, and it is also going to change in a big way. If you haven't heard of the "Jenkins report", you should be aware of it (see below). In the next years, we expect the entire National Research Council structure in Canada to change, as well as the detailed nature of R&D support for industry. 

Panel Chair Tom Jenkins, along with Arvind Gupta, Monique F. Leroux and Nobina Robinson, present their reportInnovation Canada: A Call to Action, to the Minister of State (Science and Technology) Gary Goodyear on October 17, 2011. Not shown are panel members David Naylor and Bev Dahlby. (from the Review of Federal Support to Research and Development webpage with link listed below).

http://rd-review.ca/eic/site/033.nsf/eng/home

If this seems all very foreign or irrelevant to university researchers, consider what happened just this past week. The Ontario Research Fund (ORF) provides matching support for Ontario applications to the Canadian Fondation for Innovation (CFI), as well as funds and administers the critical Research Excellence (RE) matching grants competition.

http://www.mri.gov.on.ca/english/programs/ResearchFund.asp

This RE has supported university researchers, with industry partners, with many tens of millions of dollars over the past decade alone. Many, many research staff and students that you see at Western are supported entirely or in part by the ORF RE. This past week (late monday), the current ORF RE application round, as well as the round for next year were cancelled. The money was re-allocated to the South-Western Ontario economic development innitiative announced by Dalton McGuinty on monday (you may have heard about this).

http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/news/event.php?ItemID=19651&Lang=EN).

I'm not going to say whether I think this is good or bad (it is certainly challenging), but these sort of changes (which directly reflect early implementation of the kinds of recommendations made in the federal Jenkins Report) are something we need to react to. There is no immediate benefit to be had by complaining about this, as the changes are already on our doorstep. Criticism may affect change for the coming years, but right now, we need to position ourselves to take advantage of the new climate. This means more industry collaboration, more technical service, and much more strategic planning and effort in monitoring and reacting to the varied opportunities.

The R&D climate has been slowing changing for years now, but I think it's clear that in the next several years, the changes will be larger and coming faster. It's an interesting time, so let's get ready!