Scientists across America are celebrating the passing of the Bush administration as the end of a dark age, a bleak stretch in which research budgets shrank and everything — stem cells, sex education, climate change, and the very origins of the Grand Canyon — became a point of conflict.
President Barack Obama has ignited a new optimism among the white coats. In his inaugural speech, he promised to "restore science to its rightful place," hinting at nothing short of a renaissance in the fields of health, energy, the environment and America's schools.
As a testament to that, the United States Friday became the first country in the world to approve a clinical trial of embryonic stem cells in human patients.
But in Canada's research community, Mr. Obama's plans have sparked anxiety that if this country fails to keep pace, it will have a tougher time recruiting smart people and convincing talent not to flock south. In short, Canada could lose its competitive edge to the Obama advantage.
"We have come off a very good period compared to the States and now we are in danger that they will just drive way past us," said Harvey Weingarten, president of the University of Calgary.
University of British Columbia president Stephen Toope is more blunt: "We could be left in the dust."
President Obama has talked of doubling national funds for research over the next 10 years, so from Canada's ivory towers to its lab benches, people here are holding their breath, wondering if Prime Minister Stephen Harper will send a clear signal in Tuesday's federal budget that science matters. In these dire times, research leaders want the government to treat science as an industry that is as vital to economic recovery as propping up the auto sector and building roads.
"Obama has made it clear that smart is the new cool," said Michael Hayden, a world-renowned geneticist at UBC. "As we look at the Canadian situation … and we look at our place in the world, it's clear that a bold initiative in science at this time is crucial."
Yet recent history has made some fretful of the Harper government's plans. After more than a decade of remarkable growth, federal research funding to Canadian universities has flat-lined and sunk. Some Tories' past skepticism on the science of climate change, the government's overruling of the Nuclear Safety Commission, the firing of the commission's president and the Conservatives' decision to abolish the office of the independent national science adviser have brought international criticism.
Ever since Americans elected Mr. Obama, Canadian university leaders have been busy gathering details of his plans to support science and higher education. They've used the data to sharpen their perennial lobbying efforts and convince Ottawa there's an urgent need to boost its support, worried the hard-won gains made in Canada's research sector over the last dozen years will be lost.
There is little question that the brain drain of the Bush era was Canada's gain: The number of American educators who received permits to work here grew by 15 per cent between 2002 and 2007, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada. That figure includes a 27-per-cent jump in the number of university professors and assistants who moved north during the same period.
Mick Bhatia, director of the Cancer and Stem Cell Research Institute at McMaster University in Hamilton, has spent the last two and a half years building up a 70-member research team that hails from the U.S., Europe and Asia. Asked if he has concerns that the excitement of the Obama era could lure his people away, he said: "Every day."
"I'm especially worried about the younger people, who are mobile, just starting out with their expectations and they're nimble."
Losing them, he said, is not just a matter of losing good people, but the time and money invested in them. "They go and then you have to start from scratch all over again."
