The Speech from the Throne, opening the 37th session of Parliament, was delivered in January with promises the government will continue to strategically target funding for university research. But CAUT is warning the Liberal government's plans will jeopardize the integrity and independence of university-based research.

"By tying research funding more directly to industry's priorities, you're essentially turning universities into research shops for the private sector," said CAUT president Tom Booth. "This makes for bad science. Important basic research that lacks the promise of short-term commercial profits will be marginalized. The priorities of commercialization threaten to jeopardize socially and culturally valuable research that may not be profitable, while encouraging research that makes money but may be trivial."

Last year, CAUT presented the Prime Minister with a letter signed by more than 1,400 leading researchers in Canada warning that the increasing commercialization of university research as proposed by a government advisory panel would "impede the development of new discoveries and undermine the independence of researchers."

Booth also says the apparent commitment in the throne speech to increased research funding, while badly needed, has to be matched by an increase in core operating grants to address the needs of all universities and colleges.

"The problem with putting all of your funding in the research basket is that most of this money will end up in the pockets of a handful of the wealthiest research-intensive universities," he said.

"Smaller and regional undergraduate teaching institutions will fall behind even further."

Booth says the federal government should have committed to work with the provinces to "boost the funding of all universities so that they can better help students by investing in teaching and making tuition more affordable."

Since 1992, real government funding of the large research universities has dropped by about 9 per cent, yet by more than 15 per cent at undergraduate institutions.

Booth also criticized the government's intention to establish Registered Individual Learning Accounts whereby Canadians would be provided with incentives to save their own money and withdraw funds to attend public or private training programs.

"This is the absolutely worst way to deal with the education and training needs of Canadians," he stated. "The people who need training the most — the unemployed and those in low wage jobs — are the ones who are least able to make any financial contribution to a learning account."

The full text of the Governor General's Speech from the Throne is available at www.sft-ddt.gc.ca/sftddt_e.htm.