Canada falling behind in natural resource science, report says

Canada is no longer a powerhouse in environmental and natural resources science, according to a comprehensive report released Thursday.

“The overall decline in these fields is real,” reports a blue-ribbon panel asked by the federal government to assess the state of Canada’s science and technology.

It says the country continues to excel in health sciences and information and communications technologies and many other fields, but is losing ground in natural resources and environmental sciences, which were considered two of the country’s top four scientific strengths in 2006.

Canada’s output and impact in natural resources and environmental science and technology are either static or have declined, and a growing proportion of Canadian experts identify the fields as “falling behind,” says the report by the Expert Panel on the State of Science and Technology in Canada released by the Council of Canadian Academies, a not-for-profit corporation specializing in public policy issues.

The panel of 18 experts from Canada, the United States, and Europe was chaired by Eliot Phillipson, former president and CEO of the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

The panel surveyed 5,154 researchers from around the world and another 679 in Canada, as part of its assessment of country’s multibillion-dollar research enterprise.

It concludes that Canadian science and technology “is healthy and growing” — at least when it comes to generating research papers.

With less than 0.5 per cent of the world’s population, Canada produces 4.1 per cent of the world’s scientific papers and nearly five per cent of the world’s most frequently cited papers, the 232-page report says.

While academics are cranking out papers, the panel says Canada has trouble turning know-how into patents and profits.

“In contrast to the nation’s strong performance in knowledge generation is its weaker performance in patents and related measures,” the report says. “Despite producing 4.1 per cent of the world’s scientific papers, Canada holds only 1.7 per cent of world patents.”

In 2010 it says Canada had a “negative balance” in royalties and licensing revenue — it spent almost $5 billion more in fees to access the intellectual property from other countries than it got in revenue for intellectual property held