Are scientists becoming econo-bots now?
OTTAWA — The National Research Council’s “new” focus on commercial applied science, as opposed to pure science, may look sensible enough on its face, given the federal agency’s $900-million annual budget and the limping economy.
Surely there are enough wildhaired scientists with Buddy Holly glasses doing blue-sky research in Canadian universities; and surely the NRC could put more brainpower at the disposal of industry? Never mind trying to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Get cracking on the next BlackBerry.
But this is one time the Conservatives would have been cleverer to execute their reforms quietly — secretively, if you will — rather than bellowing them to the rooftops, as Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear did Tuesday. For, as is increasingly the case in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa, context and backstory are everything. To the extent ordinary Canadians pay attention at all to the continuing transformation of the NRC, the government spin may hurt rather than help it.
Simply put, the messaging plays into the solidifying opposition narrative that the Conservatives are anti-intellectual, anti-scientific gnomes, bent on transforming Canada into a nation of soulless econo-bots.
Appearing alongside NRC president John McDougall, Goodyear waxed enthusiastic about the retooling of the NRC as a servant of business. “If Canada is going to continue to compete internationally, we must do it through new ideas, new products and opening new markets,” the minister said. “The NRC will now focus on the identified research needs of Canadian businesses. It will be customer pull.”
This direction is in keeping, to a point, with recommendations of the Jenkins review in 2011. Software executive Tom Jenkins’ panel urged the government to establish a new Industrial Research and Innovation Council that would be tailored to help business, particularly small-and medium-sized enterprises. Though the NRC retains its old name, it de facto now becomes that council. Business “stakeholders,” will be pleased — at least initially.
The pitfalls will emerge when bureaucrats begin sifting through the requests they’re likely to receive — Goodyear cast a wide net Tuesday, inviting every business in Canada, regardless of size, to henceforth consider the NRC as a kind of benevolent, wise helper, like Q in the James Bond films — and toss many in the trash.
Who will choose the recipients of the NRC’s largesse? This is a large, powerful agency, with 4,000 employees and an annual budget of close to a billion dollars. It operates 50 research facilities nationwide. Presumably federal research support will make the difference between success and failure for many companies. The potential for noses to get rubbed out of joint, let alone cronyism and abuse, is huge. Yet the minister and the NRC president were both very vague about the logis- tics of how it will work.
The NRC has always been primarily an applied science body — but one whose work was led by scientists. Its notable historical successes, noted in the minister’s media kit, include the invention of the pacemaker (1940s), canola (1950s), computer animation (1970s) and the space shuttle’s Canadarm (1980s). That begs this question: Can the system that produced these innovations be so fundamentally flawed, that it needs to be reinvented?
One benefit of paying smart people to invent and develop technologies they think will be useful, as opposed to business managers requesting help with their research and NRC staff having to choose among these requests, is simplicity. Another benefit of pure research, obviously, is that scientists bent on furthering knowledge have often reached breakthroughs that only later proved to have commercial applications.
But there’s a greater risk in this for the Conservatives: That is, that their habit of recasting every possible area of government along absolutely utilitarian lines, as they see them, is getting old. Whether it’s foreign aid, aboriginal affairs, the environment or science, the Conservative response is the same: Jobs, jobs, jobs. Is it a matter of time until questions of justice, too, will be cast in purely economic terms? The Harper Conservatives have made a virtue of being hard-focused on the economy. They’ve been so good at it for so long that the opposition parties have adopted much of their focus. They should remember, though, that universal adoption of any value set is two-edged: It comes to be viewed as a given. Canadians will soon be asking, if they’re not already: “We know you’re focused on the economy. So is everyone else. What else you got?”
Right, wrong or indifferent, the Conservatives increasingly need an answer. The pending cabinet shuffle, presumably, is where it will be found.