Canada – a scientific backwater?
It’s beginning to look like it. First there was the controversy over the disruption in the making of medical isotopes at the Atomic Energy of Canada Chalk River nuclear reactor. Then Prime Minister Harper’s announcement that Canada will get out of making these vital keys in diagnosing cancer, cardiac and other diseases.
Now comes the news that Canada’s one-time hi tech global flagship, Nortel Networks, is going to be sold off to Nokia-Siemens, the Finish-German telecommunications powerhouse.
As more than a few people have commented, it’s reminiscent of the 1959 shutdown of the Avro Arrow fight jet by Conserv ative prime minister John Diefenbaker. Or the earlier, less remembered, cancellation of Canadair’s commercial jet. The Liberal government cancelled that one in 1952, in order to divert funds to support UN operations in Korea.
What is it about Canada that once we get a leg up in some scientific field, our government bails out at the first sign of crisis?
Until a few months ago, Canada produced 31 per cent of the world’s supply of medical isotopes. Fifty thousand procedures a day have been carried out using these isotopes. They were supplied by MDS Nordion, a Toronto company which used technetium, a byproduct of molybdenum-99, from the aging nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ont.
This sorry episode of research failure and technical blundering has been overshadowed by the cheap political games played out on Parliament Hill.
It started when the nuclear safety administrator tried to shut down the AECL facility for safety reasons in 2007. No way, shouted the PM. Just a Liberal appointee, he asserted. We won’t allow isotope production to be affected.
An apparently unstoppable heavy water leak earlier this year forced another shutdown. Nobody knows for how long. But the headlines went to Lisa Raitt, the energy minister, caught on tape saying it was a sexy issue that she’d solve in no time.
She can’t, of course. Now she’s appointed an “expert committee” to review the options. The preferred one, it seems, is to find other countries willing and able to take up the slack. So Canada once again becomes a consumer rather than a producer, a follower rather than a leader.
The alarms have been sounded all over the scientific community.
“It’s going to be a drain of brains outside Canada,” says Jean-Luc Urbain of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine.
“If we don’t act now, maybe we should just put out the lights and go home,” says Domninic Ryan, prominent scientist.
Stephen DeFalco, head of MDS, disputes the government’s contention that the new Maple reactors, which were expected to replace the aging NRU facility, have fatal design flaws. Ottawa refuses to put any more money into that project.
According to Defalco:
The Maple reactors are complete, they are safe and they await final commissioning.
The tragedy in all of this is not only the health risks facing millions of people around the world due to Canada’s failure to maintain isotope production. As serious as that is, what may be even worse is the failure of successive Canadian governments to invest adequately in pure science and R&D.
We’ve got a Science Minister — Gerry Goodyear — who is an avowed religious creationist. An Opposition leader, Michael Ignatieff, who put isotopes on his list of concerns but has since been silent on the issue.
But there’s a glimmer of hope. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, supported by scientists at the University of Saskatchewan, has plans to build a reactor in Saskatoon. It would be a 10-year project. And McMaster University, in Hamilton, says it can use its cyclotron to make isotopes.
One way or another, alternative supplies will be found, in Canada or abroad. But what a sorry commentary it all makes.
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Ahh, the typical response to any failing in the high-tech world: blame the government.
Nortel has been in its death throws for decades. They had one good product, the NorthStar, and milked it for all it was worth. They’ve had nothing interesting since then.
What happens when a high-tech company has no good ideas for decades? They go out of business. Like Nortel. Why would anyone suggest this is somehow something the government should be fixing?
And then there’s AECL. One disaster after another, and its costing us taxpayers hundreds of millions a year. We have a term for this, it’s “throwing good money after bad”. Stick a fork in it, they’re done.
Thanks for the note, Maury. I think you’re oversimplifying. Your reasoning doesn’t seem to apply to GM & Chysler; perhaps you’d like the jobs associated with them tp go down the tube, too. Of course, governments can’t keep non-viable companies alive. But we can invest in promising new technologies – other governments do (including the US) but not, apparently, Canada.
> I think you’re oversimplifying.
Perhaps that’s true, but I do make these comments as someone who trained in physics, worked in a communications firm founded by ex-BNR engineers, and have written extensively on tech matters. I believe my opinion on this topic is relatively well informed.
Take a walk around the corner of College and University in Toronto some time and just look at what you see — massive building projects to house new startups. MaRS is in the middle of it’s third expansion in the last ten years, and still can’t find enough room. Right across the street is Foster’s new Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building, to it’s north is the Tanz Biomedical building, and to the west is the CCRB, all brand new or greatly expanded in order to house an explosion of fundamental research activity. Meanwhile the University Health Network completely reversed the declining medical (and especially pharma) research output after 1997, and has turned into a model that the entire world is studying.
According to the City of Toronto, building the Discovery District up to 2002 used up $500 million in direct investment – one year of AECL’s funding. In return, the area generates $4 billion _a year_ in direct revenue in Canada. All of this took place in the last decade and a half, completely reversing the declining trends that were prevalent in the mid-90s.
AECL costs us about $500 million a year and turns out little more than scandals. According to a DOE Expert Panel in 1999, the worldwide isotope market is about $100 million a year, of which AECL gets about 30 to 40%. Clearly our cash is not returning a profit here. Meanwhile, there is no conceivable way AECL can complete with the likes of Westinghouse/Toshiba, GE/Hitachi or Areva in the international market, unless you do what Cretchien did, and pay billions of our tax dollars to get China to “buy” them.
So consider: should the feds continue to fund the money pit that is AECL, or should they instead use that money to fund 100 smaller startups? Which of these paths would lead to greater R&D, especially fundamental, in Canada? And which one would lead to greater economic output in the scientific world? I think the answer is clear, in both cases the feds should get out of commercialization and stay where they’ve always been effective, fundamental research funding.
Maury
p.s. The commercial jet you refer to was made by Avro, not Canadair.
Good comments, Maury, I appreciate your input.