Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Chatham-Kent—Essex for sharing his time with me.
It is my pleasure to speak to the motion put forward by the member for Westmount—Ville-Marie.
Investments in science and technology are a central component of this government's ongoing efforts to address Canada's social and economic challenges. In my mind the facts are clear: countries that invest aggressively in innovation have high standards of living and a high quality of life. This is why on May 17, 2007 the Prime Minister released the federal science and technology strategy entitled, “Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada's Advantage”.
This strategy is a bold and forward-looking plan to build a national competitive advantage based on science and technology. Fundamentally, the science and technology strategy represents a new approach to the government's science policy. It places the emphasis on practical applications and commercial outcomes from public investments in research, through research aligned with the innovation needs of businesses.
The science and technology strategy seeks to encourage firms to be innovators, to keep Canadians at the forefront of research and discovery, and to help Canadians acquire the skills they need to participate in the knowledge-based economy. The government's sustained commitment to science and technology is reflected in the succession of recent federal budgets that have made major ongoing multi-year investments in this particular area.
Measures introduced in the federal budgets in 2006, 2007 and 2008 will have resulted in more than $2.2 billion in new science and technology spending by 2011. Budget 2009 further builds on this commitment through one of the single largest federal budget investments in science and technology to date. The economic action plan laid out in the budget includes $5.1 billion in new science and technology spending in the areas of infrastructure, research, people and commercialization.
This new spending is aligned with Canada's science and technology strategy and has been targeted to address challenges arising from the deepening global economic downturn. It can be no surprise to anyone in this House that the Government of Canada is providing substantial ongoing support for science and technology. The Government of Canada spends over $10 billion annually on all forms of science and technology in Canada and provides a further $3.7 billion per year in support to the private sector through the science, research and experimental development tax credit.
The global economy is in the most serious recession since the post-war period, and the ongoing financial market crisis is worse since the 1930s. As such, the budget announced a range of stimulus infrastructure investments supporting Canada's research capacity. The $2 billion national university and college infrastructure program will be leveraged with matching funds from other partners. This initiative is complemented by a further $750 million of investment in the Canada Foundation for Innovation, CFI, to support high-end research equipment, labs and facilities.
At a time of economic uncertainty, the university and college infrastructure program will create and maintain jobs for engineers, architects, tradespeople and technicians. Just as important, by renovating our colleges and universities we will strengthen Canada's capacity to innovate and to translate research into meaningful benefits for Canadians. It will also help achieve the objectives of the science and technology strategy by enabling these institutions to develop the highly skilled workers Canada needs to succeed in the future.
A particular priority of the government's science and technology programming is higher education, at the university and college level and particularly in R and D. As a country Canada spends more on this form of research as a proportion of GDP than any other country in the G7. Canada spends the second-most after Sweden among the 30 countries that make up the OECD. I might add that the United States ranks 17th among the OECD countries in terms of its support for higher education R and D.
To ensure that university researchers and their students across the country have funding for their initiatives, the government has increased funding for the three federal granting councils for their core programming.
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, or CIHR, and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, or NSERC, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research have received permanent increases in their budgets, totalling $40 million per year in budget 2006, $85 million per year in budget 2007 and $80 million per year in budget 2008.
To ensure continued support for the overhead costs of this research, these same budgets have also provided annual increases of $40 million, $15 million and another $15 million, respectively, in indirect costs for research programs. All these increases represent ongoing permanent increases to their core funding.
To build on our record of excellence in higher education and to build on our existing Canadian strengths, budget 2009 provides $50 million to the Institute for Quantum Computing, in Waterloo, Ontario to build a new world-class research facility and $110 million to the Canadian Space Agency to provide for the development of advanced robotics and other space technologies.
Budget 2009 also recognizes that the S and T strategy needs to be at the core of our response to the major challenges facing Canadians. For instance, to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the government is investing $1 billion over five years to support clean energy technologies, including $150 million over five years for research and $850 million over five years for the development and demonstration of promising technologies, including large scale carbon capture and storage projects.
In support of northern research, budget 2009 provides $87 million over the next years to maintain or upgrade our key Arctic research facilities.
Budget 2009 also provides $170 million over two years to secure a more sustainable and competitive forest sector. This funding will be used by companies to develop new products and processes and to take action on new opportunities in the global marketplace.
Budget 2009 supports private sector research commercialization through enhanced support of IRAP, or the industrial research assistance program. This includes $170 million in funding over two years to double the amount of funding available to help small and medium-sized companies bring their technology projects to market. An additional $30 million will help companies hire over 1,000 new skilled post-secondary graduates to support their R and D activities.
Budget 2009 provides $87.5 million over three years to temporarily expand the Canadian graduates scholarships program to support an additional 1,000 students undertaking masters degrees in each of the next two years. It also provides funding for an additional 500 doctoral students over the next number of years. This initiative will allow students facing a weak job market to deepen their research skills.
The government's focus on large scale revitalization of national research infrastructure is occurring within the context of an already well-funded research system, resulting from a succession of recent federal budgets, has made major ongoing multi-year investments in S and T.
As I mentioned earlier, the budget builds upon the strengths of previous budgets where our government has provided funding for specific initiatives, such as past investments in university research equipment through the Canada Foundation for Innovation, advanced genomics research through Genome Canada, improving the research for broadband systems across the country, supporting advanced physics research through the Perimeter Institute, a range of international research networks through the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and support for our international health research awards through the Gairdner Foundation.
Finally, I want to highlight one thing from my area. There is a new automotive innovative fund of $250 million that was established in budget 2008, of which I am very proud, to increase the research intensity of this important Canadian industrial sector. As we know, the automotive sector is going through some difficulties.
All these entities are still spending the multi-year funding provided in these budgets that have been awarded.
To conclude, we have been spending on the S and T strategy. We y have a strategy that this government put in place a couple of years ago under the leadership of our Prime Minister, Prime Minister Harper. We understand the need and the desire for Canada to be a leader in infrastructure that will provide for good quality research in our country so we can develop a—