Rising dissensions are being witnessed among the community of scientists in Canada and almost all of them are accusing the government for its naivety and negligence with regard to the domain of scientific researches. Even a panel of researchers recently accused the government of wasting taxpayer money by building research infrastructure and not rendering appropriate fund to operate it and also for not rejuvenating funding to areas where it has built proficiency by now.

It is worthwhile to mention that University of Alberta researcher Ryan McKay, at a recent national meeting of university professors in Ottawa, told colleagues, “Infrastructure without associated operational funding is wasteful.” University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

The other panelists who were perceived speaking of research funding at the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ national council meeting included W. Richard Peltier, a University of Toronto physics professor and Marjorie Griffin Cohen, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University. Both of McKay and Peltier praised the government for providing $750 million for scientific research funding through the Canadian Foundation of Innovation through to 2010 and $2 billion over two years for university infrastructure in the latest budget.

But it was the same University of Alberta researcher Ryan McKay who expressed concerns as well. On the word of him, grants cover only a portion of operating costs for a limited number of years and for that reason the facilities will fail to reach their potential. As per him, he had become acquainted with these sorry developments in the past at the University of Alberta. “The Institute for Biomedical Design was literally half a floor of one building where the equipment was put in and it sat in plastic for months, if not more than a year … while people tried to get the operational grants,” he said.