Montreal

The farewell budget from Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, announced on 18 February, contains substantial spending hikes in many areas, including science.

As Chrétien enters his final year in government, Canada is the only country in the group of seven leading economic powers that is expected to record a surplus in 2002–03 — and most of that surplus will be spent in the new budget.

Research will benefit from a 10% increase — worth Can$125 million (US$84 million) — in the annual budget for the country's three federal granting councils, which allocate funding to university researchers. A further Can$225 million will go to universities, colleges and research hospitals annually to help support this and other new research.

Part of this extra money will be channelled into the Polar Continental Shelf Project, which is responsible for providing infrastructure support for Arctic researchers. It will get a further Can$6 million over the next two years. Polar researchers warned last month that this programme would disappear without a cash injection (see Nature 421, 464; 2003). Other federal projects in the Arctic will get Can$10 million over the next two years.

Chrétien has also boosted environmental technology. Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement on limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, on 17 December, and the budget includes Can$2 billion to help implement the government's plans on climate change.

But the wide variety of projects to be funded with this money, ranging from energy efficiency in buildings to fuel-cell projects, has left some observers fearful that infighting between government departments could dilute the impact of the new money. “We find the lack of detail very disconcerting,” says John Bennett of the Sierra Club of Canada, an Ottawa-based environmental group.

A new programme will raise the number of government graduate scholarships by 70% to 10,000 by 2007. Administered by the granting councils, the scheme will support 2,000 masters and 2,000 doctoral students with annual awards of Can$17,500 and Can$35,000, respectively.

→ http://www.fin.gc.ca/budtoce/2003/budliste.htm