Fingers Crossed

As some of you may have noticed, we've gone through a bit of economic "trouble" over the past 2 years. Like most countries, my countries government spent billions of dollars trying to "stimulate" the economy; which as far as I'm concerned is a complete waste of money...

...but I digress. One thing that was interesting with these various stimulus plans is exactly what different govs around the world targeted with their stimulus dollars. The USA earmarked billions for scientific research, in the hopes of generating new technological products and stimulating green jobs. Here at home the opposite happened - funding to large scientific programs (Genome Canada, for one) was cut. Instead, our dollars went into building roads, and supporting largely foreign companies based in one province of Canada. This created an unusual divide - American researchers are flush with money; we Canadian researchers are scraping along on less than any time in recent history.

Well, it looks like the short-shifting of Canada's technological development may be coming to and end. Apparently, they have plans in the next budget to support R&D type work (which hopefully means more than restoring old funding levels).

Of course, we are talking about a government who's science & technology minister is a practitioner of woo (chiropractic "doctor") AND who is a creationist IDiot. So lets just say I don't have my hopes up too much.

The real irony, of course, is more money isn't nessisarily what we scientists want (although we wouldn't complain). Stable funding, or even a guaranteed minimal amount, would be a far greater gift - no more wondering just how much money there will be for the next round of grant applications, no lean year/rich year cycles, etc. But, as someone whose tried (and was stemmied by Canada's idiotic laws) to start his own biotech business what I really think they need to do is:

1. Provide some sort of tax breaks to capitalists and companies who invest in technology startups or who engage in R&D. As things currently stand, investing in R&D or new high-tech startups is pretty much a way of increasing your capital taxes. That doesn't exactly make these individuals want to invest in biotech startups, or engage in too much research of their own.
2. Reduce or simplify the business regulations. I shouldn't need to hire a law firm to simply start up a business - its almost as if existing business have bought out the political system to make it hard for new competitors to form...but that would never happen.
3. Take your hand out of the cookie jar. Recently, the gov's been passing laws trying to dictate where research funding should go. The only problem with that is that scientists are far more likely to be able to identify productive areas of research that the generally scientifically-illiterate politicians currently trying to pull the strings.
4. Send some of that stimulus money our way. You gave billions to foreign companies like GM (who also have spent a decade proving they are business failures); perhaps you could spread a little green to your fellow country men & women...

I'm hoping at least of of the above will come to be. But in the recesses of my heart I know that they'll fuck this one up; just like they've screwed up pretty much anything else.