Madam Speaker, it is truly an honour for me to speak today on the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne. Before I begin, however, I would like to give a bit of an explanation of the context of the aspect of the speech on which I am going to concentrate: the chairs of excellence.
In my riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine there is a university. It is the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. On the Island of Montreal we have four major universities.
There is the Université de Montréal, McGill, the two campuses of Concordia, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. I have had the honour and the privilege of studying at three of these: Concordia, McGill and UQAM.
So, when the representatives of the universities came to see me after the 1997 election to tell me of their need for more money for the research councils, funding for innovation, for infrastructure, and for the researchers themselves, I was very pleased to be able to support their approaches to the government for this funding.
As we all know, in previous budgets the Canadian government announced the creation of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation with a $1 billion endowment fund. The foundation was to create the physical infrastructure which the universities, institutes of research and the councils require. However, we need the people. We need the researchers.
We have been hearing a lot about the brain drain. One thing is clear. There has been a certain amount of brain drain in terms of our qualified researchers and our young graduates who, because of the lack of opportunities here, have been lured away to universities in the United States and elsewhere to undertake important research activities.
It was a great pleasure for me to learn that our government, through its throne speech, took on the challenge. By doing so it has started a bold venture that will be one of the cornerstones of our effort as a government to ensure that Canada is the place to be, the place to live, the place that people want to come to and the place where people want to stay in the third millennium to take full advantage of the knowledge based society and economy of the 21st century.
What is that bold venture? That bold venture is the creation of the 21st century chairs for research excellence. The government announced in its throne speech that through the research granting councils, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Medical Research Council and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, it will be funding the creation of 1,200 new 21st century chairs for research excellence in Canadian universities over the next three years.
That is a major investment. We can be assured that our Canadian universities have received the information on this new project with great joy and happiness.
We will be investing in the first year $60 million, in the second year $120 million and in the third year and every subsequent year $180 million.
One of the objectives is not simply to rest on our laurels with 1,200 chairs, it is ultimately to bring that number up to 2,000 chairs of research excellence in the third millennium.
What are these chairs of excellence going to do? They are going to be two tiered. One will be to attract our established star researchers who already have a proven record in their field of conducting leading research endeavours. The second tier will be to attract our rising stars. We have been losing on both fronts over the last years. Everyone knows that the government in its fight to eliminate the deficit had to reduce funding to the research councils. That obviously had a boomerang effect. It meant that there was less money for researchers. Therefore, researchers who wanted to continue conducting their work in some cases had to look elsewhere.
By creating these 1,200 chairs of research excellence, and hopefully bringing them up to 2,000, we will be able to keep our proven star researchers and attract the rising stars. All Canadian universities will be able to participate.
To receive funding the universities will submit proposals to a competitive peer review process which will be administered by the three granting councils.
This program sends a strong message, a strong signal that Canada is the place to be for research and development in the third millennium, that Canada is serious about fostering and nurturing a healthy research environment in Canada and that we are serious about nurturing and fostering a strong economy through knowledge and innovation.
This is what we call added value. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the expansion of the networks of centres of excellence and the development of the Canadian institutes of health research that the hon. member for Peterborough spoke about at great length are the cornerstones that will ensure that Canada will be the place to be for research and innovation in the third millennium. Our renewed and increased funding to the granting councils is the added value, along with the 21st century chairs of research excellence.
I am not an innovative person, so I have a difficult time imagining what else we can do. However, I am sure that with all of the bright minds in the House we will get many suggestions on what we can do to ensure that we are the place to be.
By creating these 1,200 chairs of research excellence we will have the best people doing research in Canada, which will create our next generation of the world's best. The world's best will be here in Canada. Our young researchers will seek out the top opportunities for work and they will choose Canada, both our young researchers in Canada as well as those from elsewhere. Graduate students will be looking for leaders, proven stars in research, to assist them in their research projects. Because there will be the first tier for the star researchers with a proven track record, they will want to come to our Canadian universities to complete their graduate and post-graduate studies.
The program for the 21st century chairs for research excellence builds on the comprehensive strategy to boost innovation that this Liberal government has been implementing over the last three years. As I mentioned, that includes a $1 billion endowment for the Canada foundation for innovation, the expansion of the networks of centres of excellence, the Canadian institutes for health research with $500 million over three years and the renewal of funding to our granting councils.
