Research and development

In some cases, of course, business' interests do coincide with the greater good. Unfortunately, it appears that Martin is dropping the ball on one of those:

After presiding for nearly a decade over extraordinary growth in the budgets and ambitions of the agency that funds more of Canada's academic research projects than any other, Renaud said he would have liked to have served two more years, and admitted: "I'm worried, to be frank." For two budgets in a row, growth in federal investment in research and innovation has stalled. "It's as if universities have had enough. I kept being told by people all over Ottawa, 'Marc, don't expect the growth that you've seen for the last eight years for the next few years.' "

Now, is this all soft social science research that we should be eliminating in favour of a business and science orientation? Not so much:

A health sociologist from the Université de Montréal, Renaud has spent the last year and a half in consultations with university administrators and faculty with an eye toward overhauling SSHRC's mandate. He wants Canada's social-science and humanities researchers to be better connected -- with one another, with the outside world, with mainstream media outlets and with governments. He wants to keep pace with an explosion in research in fields where research involves tools far more exacting than the traditional humanities diet of late nights over dusty books.

"Don't forget, we cover the landscape," he says. "We always thought social science was soft stuff and people just needed their pens. And it turns out, it's not true." Now, longitudinal surveys -- immense databases that track information about large samples of people over long periods of time -- "allow us to compare what aging means in Greece and Italy and Canada, given different policies, the climate, the family structure," Renaud says. "Five years ago there were zero students doing their thesis on this. Now there's 400 in Canada."

The upshot? Renaud wants SSHRC's $240-million budget for research and graduate-student training to double over five years. It sounds extravagant until you realize that the budget is barely a quarter of those for either of the two granting councils for science.

Compared to a tax cut which would have relatively little impact on any given business, this would be an extremely sound investment. Unfortunately, it's one that Martin doesn't seem to want to make. The NDP should be all over this one.