Cuts defended as product of economic recession
Jacqueline Perlin
Assistant News Editor
@jackieperlin
Dalton McGuinty’s government might be handing out grants to undergraduate students this year, but at the expense of research grants.
To address the economic downturn, the Liberal party of Ontario has decided to cut $42-million to university research grants by eliminating the Ontario Research Fund (ORF).
“In the face of an uncertain global economy, the government has had to make difficult choices,” says Brianna Ames, special assistant to Brad Duguid, minister of economic development and innovation. “Given Ontario’s current fiscal challenges, funding for new programs will be offset from existing program funding.”
The cut will significantly impact York faculty and graduate students who depend on grants to fund their research projects.
“It came out a few weeks ago that in the midst of all their pats on the back on the new [tuition] grant program, that the Liberals have actually cut $112 million in total grants,” explains Alastair Woods, vp campaigns and advocacy for the York Federation of Students (YFS), noting that a government official recently said cuts could go as high as $200 million by next year.
The new Liberal tuition grant, however, fails to apply to graduate students.
“This is taking money from us from two places,” says Carolyn Hibbs, president of the Graduate Students Association. Since graduate students are not eligible for the tuition rebate program, she says grad students would be left to look for funding elsewhere.
“[The grants are] things we rely on, so we are left to look for funding in other areas,” says Hibbs, noting that graduate students are left to pursue loans, national funding or private partnerships.
Hibbs says that national funding is inadequate and Ontario scholarships are limited to about three to five per cent of graduate students.
According to York’s vp research and innovation, Robert Hache, the university applied for approximately $13 million out of the $42 million of the ORF. 13 teams of investigators expected to receive funding for one-third of their research projects and the rest was to be paid through a partnership which had already been secured in the form of a grant—where the private partners have no claim on the intellectual property created and therefore researchers are left with the ability to engage in unbiased research.
“[Now] either the two sides get together or the projects don’t happen,” says Hache, noting that if the government does not step in, graduate researchers will be expected to get full funding from private partners.
Hache also says currently most of the 13 projects are on hiatus and looking for an alternative funding method.
“[The grant cut] makes achieving our objectives in research more challenging,” he says.
Hibbs also points out that relying completely on private partners can pose serious problems for research.
“Often private funding comes along with limitations on what kinds of research people can pursue or publish […] and private companies often have a real interest in putting out information that benefits them as a company,” says Hibbs.
Woods raises the concern that relying on private funding becomes problematic with academic freedom.
“With private donors, there’s always the risk that your research will be dictated by whoever funds it,” he says. “The point of public research money is that it’s public research, and whatever the results should find are public knowledge.
Nevertheless, Ames contends that despite this announcement, the Liberal government will continue to invest in research and innovation in the coming year to the sum of $200 million in areas such as health care and clean technology, and graduate students can look to this money for their future projects through awards.
