It's all about retaining our best and brightest

Q: Let's start out with an extremely blunt question. How good is Canadian research?

The short answer is, extremely good. Canada, with about 0.5 per cent of the world's population, produces 2 per cent of the world's GDP. But at the same time Canadian science creates 4 per cent of Earth's global knowledge. Papers, patents, citations - the research measurables.

Why are we so good?

In the past I would have said that necessity was not just the mother of Canadian research invention but the mother, father and godfather. And that was because the prevailing mindset in Canada was how do we do the best we can with very limited resources. A regular question was: What I can I hope to achieve with my $35,000? And Canadian research funders were very good at figuring out who was best at getting a big bang for a little buck. But in the last decade or so there has been a transformation in thinking to: What do I need to do it right? Who do I need to do it right?

What allowed for that transformation to take place?

Part was the support for physical infrastructure which came from OIT and the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Equally important was the support for human infrastructure that was provided by the roughly 2,000 Canada Research Chairs that the federal government created. Not to mention graduate and undergraduate scholarships. There are issues - I could complain in extenso about our relative lack of operating funds - but the truth is that over the last decade we have been able to recruit to our universities many of the best and brightest in this country and from around the world.

That sounds all good.

Well, nothing is all good, and what is - let me not say bad but quite challenging about what we have done - is now we have to deal with the threats of success.

What are those?

We've raised expectations in everyone - students, professors, university administrators, government - about future Canadian scientific productivity and innovation. We don't think we are supposed to be as good as possible under perpetually straitened circumstances. We now think we are supposed to be as good as possible - period.

Which means?

Which means that in the very near future the retention of the crème de la crème whom we have recruited is going to become a major issue. Part of this has to do with other countries looking at how successful we have been at recruiting top people and putting in place programs which mimic ours. But equally importantly, if you have gathered some of the best people in the world to your campuses, they inevitably are going to be among the people the rest of the planet goes after. We, across the country, have created a major league team of science players, and now other big league clubs will come recruiting them.

Which tells us?

We can't stop with what we have done. Great scientists can and will go anywhere. Therefore, it is imperative for us to reward them financially, to make sure that their physical equipment remains the best there is, to recognize them openly and often for any of the variety of good things they do - particularly when it comes to innovation and collaboration.

And if not?

Well, frankly, then we'll see what is in many ways a golden epoch of Canadian science become the height from which we fell. If we can't retain the incredible talent we have recruited, we will most likely become known as the country of "could have been" and "might have achieved." But, ultimately, we will be known as the country which slipped out of the major leagues of 21st-century science.