The 2023 Bouchard report shone a spotlight on the federal government’s research funding architecture, advocating a number of strategic changes. Amongst other recommendations was a call for a new paradigm for support of Canada’s national research infrastructures, stressing the need for a more coherent approach to funding major research facilities (MRFs), with funding through the planning, construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning of the facility. It also spoke to the need to set decisions in a national roadmap that would typically speak to the role and contributions of such research infrastructures to the research and innovation ecosystem.
Subsequent to that report, the Government of Canada requested that the CFI inform and implement a new decision-making and funding framework to address the unique challenges of Canada’s MRFs. It initially designated six national facilities to transition to this new MRF Framework, and CFI is now moving forward on implementation of phase 1. While this will be most significant now for these six and their host universities, change will not be restricted to those six. We can expect evolution of how CFI manages all Major Science Initiatives (MSI) and ideally much more.
This webinar will outline the state-of-play of the very active national conversation on research infrastructures, the case for concerted attention to the under-resourced resourced and fragmented set of investments in research infrastructures, and the issues facing universities in the short, mid and long term, both host institutions and partners in the support.
Janet has extensive and both past and current experience in S&T policy and the governance and management of S&T funding and policy bodies. She currently serves on many non-profit boards and committees dealing with various aspects of academic research. She chairs the Board of the Canadian Research Data Centre Network and the Canadian Science Policy Centre responsible for the annual CSPC conference. She is currently preparing a paper on national research infrastructures for the Council of Canadian Academies as input to their project on “The State of Science, Technology, and Innovation in Canada”.
In April 2007 Janet retired from many years of public service – serving in her final years as Executive Vice-President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). From 1975-1996 Janet served the research and academic communities in other executive, advisory and management positions, including Chair of the Nova Scotia Council on Higher Education, Chair of the Science Council of Canada, and an officer of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Janet is a recipient of the CARA Walter Hitschfeld Prize for university research administration and lifetime CARA member.
Event Date: 25 Mar 2025 | City: | Venue: Online