50 million federal dollars for IQC

Waterloo - Daily Bulletin - UW got a direct mention in yesterday's federal budget, as the cascade of "infrastructure" funding included an earmarked grant of $50 million to help build the Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre.

To nobody's surprise, the tax cuts proposed in the budget are accompanied by extensive spending, all intended to stimulate the nation's drooping economy. But most of the new money is in large envelopes, such as $2 billion promised for college and university construction across Canada. The bottom line, according to finance minister Jim Flaherty, will be huge deficits over the next couple of years as money flows out from Ottawa long before the revived economy starts sending it back again in the form of taxes.

Among the promises Flaherty made in the House of Commons yesterday were several under the heading of “Investments in Knowledge Infrastructure”. An excerpt from the online budget documents:

“The Government will advance Canada’s knowledge advantage by dedicating up to $2 billion to repair, retrofit and expand facilities at post-secondary institutions; providing $750 million for leading-edge research infrastructure through the Canada Foundation for Innovation; providing $50 million to the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Ontario to build a new world-class research facility.

“Allocating $87 million over the next two years to maintain or upgrade key Arctic research facilities; providing $250 million over two years to address deferred maintenance at federal laboratories; providing $500 million to Canada Health Infoway to encourage the greater use of electronic health records; providing $225 million over three years to develop and implement a strategy on extending broadband coverage to unserved communities.”

The $50 million in federal funding for IQC has been a topic for discussion — and hope — ever since it was proposed during the January 2006 election campaign. The Lazaridis Centre, which IQC will share with the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, is already under construction at the centre of campus, with an estimated total cost of $160 million.

“The government of Canada is to be commended for investing in the groundbreaking work of researchers exploring the new frontier that is the world of quantum computing,” UW president David Johnston said last night. “This investment, matched by a $50 million investment from Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis and $50 million from the province of Ontario, will help meet operating and capital needs of our Institute for Quantum Computing for years to come."

Johnston was also complimentary to the other federal spending: “The University of Waterloo applauds the government’s decision to invest in Canadian infrastructure. With what we can contribute, and with what we hope will be matching funds by the provincial government, Waterloo and other institutions can better address campus renewal and invest in capital initiatives that will further our teaching and research contributions to Canada and the world.”

Analysts were working on the fine print of the budget last night, hoping to figure out, for example, how UW might get involved with the money that Ottawa says it will spend on “green research” over the next two years.

Students were not quite so exuberant. “Lacking from the budget were student support measures, or investments in research aimed at fostering the knowledge economy that colleges and universities deliver,” said Andres Fuentes, vice-president (education) of UW’s Federation of Students. "Brick and mortar developments help our economies in the short run, but investing in education drives our wealth and prosperity for many years. We would have liked to have seen an investment to enhance access.”

And a headline in this morning's Globe and Mail is "Money for bricks, but not talent," over a story quoting several higher education leaders about how little the budget is doing for actual science and academic manpower.