Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration released its 2018 budget on 27 February and scientists couldn’t be happier. It includes almost Can$4 billion (US$3.1 billion) in new funding for science over the next five years, a significant portion of which will go to the country’s three granting councils. This is in contrast to the Can$1 billion in new science funding contained in last year’s budget — almost none of which went to basic research.
The latest budget is “the single largest investment in investigator-led fundamental research in Canadian history,” said finance minister Bill Morneau in remarks to legislators on 27 February.
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research will each receive Can$354.7 million, while the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will get Can$215.5 million. All three councils will share another Can$275 million to support research that is “international, interdisciplinary, fast-breaking and higher-risk”. Much of this money will be reserved for early and mid-career researchers. The councils didn’t receive any new funding in 2017, and have only gotten tens of millions of new money in past years.
Scientists had been lobbying Trudeau’s middle-left Liberal government hard for an unrestricted boost to granting-council budgets, as opposed to funding earmarked for specific research projects, which has been a hallmark of previous years.
The move follows recommendations from last year’s Fundamental Science Review, a report by an expert panel led by former University of Toronto president David Naylor. He was “relieved and pleased” with this “historic recalibration” in science funding. “They seem to have read the report more carefully than most governments,” he says.
