Canadian Association of University Teachers: Canada Needs a Government to Match What the Obama Government is Doing for Research. (March 26, 2007)

While the Canadian Minister for Science and Technology, Gary Goodyear, is under fire for his view of evolution, James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), says that the question is not whether Goodyear should be replaced but whether [Steven Harper's Conservative] government will commit to investing in research. "We need the government to match what the Obama government is doing for research."

Nature this week reports: "The 2009 federal [Canadian] budget has been widely criticized by the research community. Much of the worry has centred on its effects on the three granting councils — the [Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council] NSERC, [Canadian Institutes of Health Research] CIHR and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council — which were told to scale back their collective budget by Can$147.9 million [A$171.6 million] over three years.

And Dick Peltier, a physicist and the director of the Centre for Global Change Science at the University of Toronto told Nature: "It's a significant concern for those of us who believe that curiosity-driven research will, over time, lead to major breakthroughs. It's a short-term mindset that is not in accord with the historical evolution of ideas, and it is a terrible mistake."