The House of Common’s Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) released its report, Driving Inclusive Growth: Spurring Productivity and Competitiveness in Canada that contains recommendations for consideration by the Minister of Finance for the 2018 federal budget. A number of recommendations stemming from the Naylor Report and Canada’s Fundamental Science Review have been proposed, including:

• Recommendation 2: Provide funds to the Canadian Cardiovascular Society’s pan-Canadian heart health initiative.
• Recommendation 3: Invest in ovarian cancer research to advance a personalized medicine platform for this cancer and to reduce the five-year mortality rate associated with it.
• Recommendation 87: Support research hospitals by providing direct eligibility for infrastructure and innovation support and by increasing funding, over a four-year period, for investigator-led fundamental research.
• Recommendation 50: Using the Fundamental Science Review (the Naylor Report) as a framework for long-term support of science and research. In particular, the government should invest in investigator-led research, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, applied science research institutions, as well as in agricultural research. The government should also expand access to the Canadian Graduate Scholarship program.
• Recommendation 16: Increase Canadian students’ access to undergraduate research opportunities.
• Recommendation 19: Support a pilot grant through the SSHRC, NSERC and CIHR that would provide students and faculty with an incentive to develop open educational resources.

This is good news for WHRI researchers and for all Canadians involved in research.

We will update our members on the status of these recommendations as they are available.

For more information, please see:

http://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/FINA/report-21