The federal government raised red flags with the announcement of a new selection process for the up-coming Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) competition.
The 2012 selection board, led by an American university president and a former chief of staff to Brian Mulroney when Prime Minister and corporate executive, will be doling out another $53.5 million over five years to fund 10 new chairholders. In comparison, the three federal granting councils — the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research — received just $37 million in new funding last year to support more than 30,000 university researchers. At least six of the chairs will be awarded in the four priority research areas of the federal government’s science and technology strategy.
Science and Technology Minister Gary Goodyear announced Jan. 12 that Princeton University president Shirley Tilghman would co-chair the selection board for the 2012 CERC competition. Derek H. Burney will chair the selection board again this year. He is currently a senior strategic advisor to Norton Rose OR LLP, an international law firm focusing on commodities trading in areas such as mining and pharmaceuticals. The remaining members of the selection board will be announced by the spring.
“There is no shortage of distinguished academics in Canadian universities who could lead the selection process,” said James Turk, executive director of CAUT.
He also noted that the government’s disregard for academics at Canadian universities was total since the program’s launch in 2008. Not one of the 15 members of the selection board for the first round of chairs announced in 2010, nor a single member of the competition’s 36-person phase 1 review panel, nor any member of the 13-person phase 2 review panel, was teaching at a Canadian university.
Also in that round, no Canadian-based researchers were selected as chairholders. The 18 successful candidates were also all male, reinforcing previous gender equity concerns in research chair awards.
The CERC program has been criticized for imposing new costs on institutions and diverting resources internally. A requirement of the program is that each host university must ensure 100 per cent in matching funds over the same period (excluding tri-agency and Canada Foundation for Innovation funds).
“Spending massive resources on 10 researchers, while funding for everyone else is declining in real dollar terms is the wrong way to go,” Turk said.
“Canadian science will best prosper when universities and colleges are adequately funded, when basic research funding provided through the three granting agencies is sufficient to fund projects of scientific merit across all disciplines, and when funding priorities are based on the judgment of the scientific community, not political decisions of the federal government.”