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The original version was signed by
The Honourable Tony Clement
Minister of Industry
AIP | Atlantic Investment Partnership |
ALMA | Atacama Large Millimeter Array |
CBRN | Chemical, Biological, Radiation and Nuclear |
cGMP | Current Good Manufacturing Practices |
CFHT | Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope |
CRTI | CBRN Research and Technology Initiative |
CTI | Competitive Technology Intelligence |
DND | Department of National Defence |
DRDC | Defence Research and Development Canada |
FCHP | Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Program |
FTE | Full-Time Equivalent |
GHI | Genomics and Health Initiative |
HRM | Human Resources Management |
IP | Intellectual Property |
IPF | Industry Partnership Facility |
ITA | Industrial Technology Advisor |
JCMT | James Clerk Maxwell Telescope |
LRP | Long Range Plan for Astronomy and Astrophysics |
LTRC | Language Technologies Research Center |
MRI | Magnetic Resonance Imaging |
MSE | Medium-Sized Enterprise |
NIC | NRC Information Centre (NRC-CISTI) |
NINT | National Institute for Nanotechnology |
NMI | National Metrology Institute |
NRC | National Research Council Canada |
NRC-AMTC | Aerospace Manufacturing Technology Centre |
NRC-ATC | Aluminium Technology Centre |
NRC-BRI | Biotechnology Research Institute |
NRC-CHC | Canadian Hydraulics Centre |
NRC-CISTI | Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information |
NRC-CPFC | Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre |
NRC-CSIR | Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure Research |
NRC-CSTT | Centre for Surface Transportation Technology |
NRC-GTL | Gas Turbine Laboratory |
NRC-HIA | Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics |
NRC-IAR | Institute for Aerospace Research |
NRC-IBD | Institute for Biodiagnostics |
NRC-IBS | Institute for Biological Sciences |
NRC-ICPET | Institute for Chemical Process and Environmental Technology |
NRC-IFCI | Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation |
NRC-IIT | Institute for Information Technology |
NRC-IMB | Institute for Marine Biosciences |
NRC-IMI | Industrial Materials Institute |
NRC-IMS | Institute for Microstructural Sciences |
NRC-INMS | Institute for National Measurement Standards |
NRC-INH | Institute for Nutrisciences and Health |
NRC-IOT | Institute for Ocean Technology |
NRC-IRAP | Industrial Research Assistance Program |
NRC-IRC | Institute for Research in Construction |
NRC-PBI | Plant Biotechnology Institute |
NRC-SIMS | Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences |
NSERC | Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada |
OAG | Office of the Auditor General of Canada |
OECD | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development |
OTEC | Ocean Technology Enterprise Centre |
PEMFC | Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells |
PRI | Policy Research Initiative |
R&D | Research and Development |
S&T | Science and Technology |
SMEs | Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises |
SOFC | Solid Oxide Fuel Cells |
STM | Scientific, Technical and Medical |
TBS | Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat |
TIS | Technology and Industry Support |
The Industry Portfolio experienced a busy and successful 2007-2008. As Minister of Industry, I am pleased with the progress made on our mission to foster a competitive, knowledge-based economy that benefits all Canadians.
A competitive economy is one that provides jobs and opportunity to Canadians, and top-quality products and services to consumers. Our economic performance underpins the quality of life we enjoy in this country, and the National Research Council Canada is making important contributions to this mission.
The Industry Portfolio is composed of Industry Canada and 10 other agencies, Crown corporations and quasi-judicial bodies. These organizations collectively advance Canada's industrial, scientific and economic development, and help ensure that we remain competitive in the global marketplace.
As a country, we must remain focused on how we can continue to provide an innovative and entrepreneurial economic environment, help our businesses capitalize on opportunities, and provide choice and quality to consumers. The global marketplace continues to evolve, changing with it the dynamics that influence Canada's performance. I am proud to say that the Industry Portfolio is playing its part:
One of my key priorities as Industry Minister continues to be our country's science and technology (S&T) strategy, Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada's Advantage, announced by Prime Minister Harper in May 2007.
This has been a year of progress and success, and it is my pleasure to present the National Research Council Canada's Departmental Performance Report for 2007–2008. I am committed to building on these successes in 2008 and beyond, and I will continue to work with officials in the Industry Portfolio to make Canada more efficient, productive and competitive.
Tony Clement
Minister of Industry
I submit for tabling in Parliament, the 2007-08 Departmental Performance Report for the National Research Council Canada.
This document has been prepared based on the reporting principles contained in the Guide for the Preparation of Part III of the 2007-08 Estimates: Reports on Plans and Priorities and Departmental Performance Reports:
Dr. Pierre Coulombe
President
Raison d’être
The National Research Council (NRC) is the Government of Canada’s leading resource for science and technology (S&T) and innovation with a business focus on:
Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage through NRC
NRC is moving forward with an important role in helping to achieve the goals of the Government of Canada’s Science and Technology Strategy, Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage, announced by the Prime Minister in May 2007. The new federal S&T Strategy sets out a multi-year framework to create a competitive advantage for Canada through S&T. It focuses on the principles of promoting world-class excellence, focusing on priorities, fostering partnerships and enhancing accountability. It sets out a plan to foster three distinct S&T advantages for Canada:
NRC’s own Strategy to 2011, Science at Work for Canada, is consistent with these principles and objectives and establishes NRC as an important vehicle to help deliver on the new federal S&T Strategy. NRC is enhancing Canada’s Entrepreneurial Advantage by meeting the needs of industry for targeted research and by transferring its discoveries to the private sector. To support Canada’s Knowledge Advantage, NRC is strategically contributing to the four research priority areas identified in the federal S&T Strategy: environmental science and technologies; natural resources and energy; health and related life sciences and technologies; and information and communication technologies (ICT). NRC will anticipate and respond to important national priorities by engaging innovation system participants in multi-stakeholder collaborations and developing key competencies that will prepare NRC to support Canada’s current and future S&T priorities. Lastly, but critically important, NRC is supporting the People Advantage, by attracting and retaining highly-skilled workers needed to thrive in a global economy. Through establishing entities such as the National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) and the NRC Institute for Nutrisciences and Health (NRC-INH), for example, NRC is helping to build strong multidisciplinary teams of international calibre researchers to deliver leading-edge work for Canada.
NRC’s basis for reporting to Parliament is its Program Activity Architecture (PAA). The PAA seeks to describe how the NRC manages the resources under its control to achieve intended results. Two Program Activities contribute to NRC’s strategic outcome. Each Program Activity is in turn associated with several program sub-activities as depicted in the Figure 1-1 below.
Figure 1-1: NRC's Program Activity Architecture
As part of the program realignment and priority setting exercise that took place in September 2007, the NRC-Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute’s resources were re-allocated to the NRC-Industrial Materials Institute and the NRC-Institute for Research in Construction.
2007-2008 | ||
---|---|---|
Planned Spending |
Total Authorities |
Actual Spending |
712.4 |
865.9 |
771.2 |
2007-2008 | ||
---|---|---|
Planned |
Actual |
Difference |
4,044 |
4,280 |
(236) |
Note: Due to rounding figures may not add to total shown
Name | Type |
Performance Status |
---|---|---|
|
Ongoing |
Successfully met |
|
Previously committed |
Successfully met |
|
Ongoing |
Successfully met |
|
Ongoing |
Successfully met |
Strategic Outcome: An innovative, knowledge-based economy for Canada through research and development, technology commercialization and industry support |
2007-08 |
Contributes to the following priorities |
|||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Planned Spending |
Actual Spending |
||||
|
Expected results |
Performance Status* |
|||
Research and Development |
|
Successfully met |
413.88 |
393.09 |
Priority 1 and Priority 2 |
Technology and Industry Support |
|
Successfully met |
194.00 |
187.36 |
Priority 2 and Priority 3 |
Technology Clusters |
|
Successfully met |
30.04 |
57.99 |
Priority 2 |
Internal Services** |
|
Successfully met |
74.51 |
132.71 |
Priority 4 |
* Expected Results identified in the NRC 2007-08 RPP apply to a three-year period; therefore, performance is based on the overall progress towards the expected results.
** NRC’s Corporate Branches provide policy, program advice and executive support for the coordination and direction of NRC’s operations and the NRC Council contributing directly to Priority 4 and in a corporate support capacity, to Priorities 1, 2 and 3.
NRC delivers on its strategic outcome by creating wealth, knowledge and social capital for Canadians. Figure 1-2 highlights the plans and priorities identified in the 2007-08 to 2009-10 periods (as identified in the NRC 2007-08 Report on Plans and Priorities (RPP)).
Operating Environment
NRC has unique attributes that shape its operating environment, including:
National S&T Infrastructure
NRC delivers a national S&T program with laboratories, centres and facilities in communities across Canada (http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/contactIBP_e.html).
Ownership, Management and Maintenance of Capital Assets
Responsible for its own highly technical and complex operations, NRC manages 185 buildings totalling approximately 560,140 square metres of space.
Funding
NRC is funded through government appropriations. In the course of providing technical services to companies and other organizations, it recovers its costs for the purpose of reinvesting in the operation and maintenance of equipment and facilities.
Internal Factors
The ability to perform at the leading-edge of R&D and to support Canadian industry in becoming more technology intensive and innovation-driven requires the best available equipment, facilities and highly qualified scientists, engineers, technicians and other professionals. NRC faced challenges in sustaining these key resources and continued to focus on strategies to address these challenges.
In 2007-08, NRC conducted a program realignment and priority setting exercise. This exercise was designed to enable NRC to better focus on its strategies and be more responsive and agile with respect to its priorities. NRC reallocated resources from low priority programs to higher priority areas and eliminated or realigned several programs. As a result, in September 2007, 87 employees were workforce adjusted. Following this exercise, NRC placed 48% of surplus employees into assignments or continuing positions. The placement rate by bargaining agent was 57% for Research Council Employees’ Association and 23% for Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.
In 2007-08, NRC began implementation of a new organization structure for its communications function. The new structure aligns with and positions NRC’s communications function, structure, competencies and resources to support NRC’s Strategy as well as relevant Government of Canada S&T priorities.
External Factors
Economic Context – Canadian economic performance continued at a solid pace in 2007 with a real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 2.7%, a slight deceleration from the 2.8% in 2006, matching the average growth for the past five years.1 Real personal expenditure on consumer goods and services was the strongest contributor, advancing 4.7% in 2007, its best performance since 1985. Labour income (up 6.1%) and corporate profits (up 5.8%) contributed to that strength.2
Employment creation was at a three-decade high, bringing the unemployment rate down to 6% for 2007, its lowest level since 1974. Employment grew 2.3% with 382,100 net new jobs created. Over three times as many full time jobs were created as part time jobs (293,400 versus 88,600), but growth in part time jobs was faster at 3% than that of full time jobs at 2.2%, in contrast to the two previous years where full time job growth exceeded part time job growth.3
Relative to key currencies, the annual average value of the Canadian dollar appreciated against the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen in 2007, by 5.5 % and 6.9% respectively in 2007, continuing the trend that began in 2003. The trend changed however against the euro and the pound with the Canadian dollar depreciating by 3.1% and 2.8%, respectively, on an annual average basis.4
In Canada, private equity firms raised $5.8 billion in 2007, compared to $10.3 billion in 2006. Venture capital, accounted for 20% of the private equity market in 2007 compared to 16% in 2006. Venture capital activity focused even more heavily on expansion and other late-stage transactions in 2007, which captured 62% of total dollars invested. The higher levels of venture capital market activity experienced in 2007 can be attributed largely to the quality and quantity of opportunities on offer in Canada’s emerging technology sectors.5
Dynamic local sector clusters and entrepreneurial communities have attracted more attention from risk investors, both at home and abroad. In 2007, Canada saw rising activity across all major sectors of interest – communications and IT, biopharmaceuticals and other life sciences and, increasingly, environmental technology. Key urban locales, such as Vancouver, Toronto, Waterloo, Ottawa and Montreal, are being recognized globally as fast-maturing innovative hubs, spawning a number of promising startups.6
The following section summarizes NRC’S overall performance in relation to its 2007-08 priorities, listed in Table 1-3.
1. R&D in Key Sectors and Areas Critical to Canada’s Future – Successfully met.
Research and innovation are critical to Canada’s future economic growth and an improved quality of life for Canadians. As Canada’s foremost R&D agency, NRC concentrates its efforts on two vital elements of R&D excellence: quality and relevance. In 2007-08, NRC played a key role in helping Canada reach its full potential by performing research in fields that are of current and future importance from a social and economic perspective, in line with the federal S&T Strategy.
NRC’s R&D provided Canadian companies with increased access to new technologies through patents and licences creating an Entrepreneurial Advantage for Canada. In 2007-08, NRC R&D led directly to the creation of intellectual property (IP), with 196 patents applied for during the year and 69 patents obtained from applications made in previous years. NRC also signed 98 new technology licensing agreements with industry, contributing to the flow of innovation into business applications. These activities contributed to the program activity’s expected result of advancement of new technology-based companies. NRC researchers published technical reports, presented papers in conference proceedings and produced technical reports for clients during the year, disseminating knowledge for innovation and long-term value creation for Canadian industry and the public at large.
NRC’s leadership standing in new and emerging research domains remained high. To contribute to Canada’s S&T Knowledge Advantage, NRC conducted research in areas of economic and social importance. From an economic perspective, investment and research in aerospace technology such as composite material aircraft components and turbine engine icing certification has kept Canada among the world leaders in this sector. Nanotechnology R&D at NRC resulted in advances to extend the service life of concrete and established novel approaches to nano-engineering of concrete structures. Improved materials, catalysts and advanced modeling and testing methods continued to solidify Canada’s position at the leading-edge of fuel cell technology.
NRC also completed R&D activities that contributed to the well-being of Canadians. Genome research is ongoing in areas such as food production (productivity of canola crops) and treating of human and animal disease (cancer identification, diagnostic tools for heart attack patients, controlling human cholesterol levels). NRC researchers also conducted research in the areas of bioactives and nutraceuticals. Extracts and bioactives from such plants as cranberries, blueberries, hemp, hops and poppies were screened and evaluated for anti-oxidant, neuro-regeneration and anti-cancer effects. Novel techniques using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology were developed and tested with positive results. These will eventually lead to less invasive diagnosis of breast cancer. R&D work was also completed to develop analytical methods for rapid and highly sensitive detection of chemical warfare agents, toxic agrochemicals and other toxins, to enhance the security of Canadians.
Collaborating with industry and academia to further scientific frontiers was also a cornerstone activity for NRC during the reporting period. Major contributions in astronomy, sub-atomic particle physics and neutron beam experiments were made, such as:
NRC also continued to work with international standards bodies, ensuring compatibility of Canada's National Metrology Standards with those around the globe, assisting in the development of new measurement science (e.g., nanotechnology) and determining standards and methods of measurement that impact directly on the ability of Canadian firms to trade internationally.
2. Community Technology Clustering Initiatives – Successfully met.
In support of Canada’s S&T Knowledge Advantage, NRC continued to explore and develop innovative models for S&T partnership and collaboration between federal departments and agencies and other sectors. During the reporting period, NRC was involved in the ongoing development of eleven technology clusters across the country. Technology clusters are community partnerships focused on building competitive advantage through research and innovation. NRC helped clusters develop technology road maps and fostered alliances that are being used to transfer technology to the cluster participants. These clusters focus on areas such as life sciences, information technology and e-business, ocean technology, aluminium transformation, photonics, biomedical technologies, plants for health and wellness, nanotechnology, fuel cell and hydrogen technology, nutrisciences and health, and sustainable infrastructure. Priority 2 contributes to the achievement of NRC’s Strategic Outcome by fostering innovation and economic growth through community partnerships.
To contribute to increasing the impact of federal business R&D assistance programs, NRC-IRAP engaged and linked regional groups, through development of technical, financial and business networks that are the foundation of technology clusters. Over $1.5 million was contributed to 45 innovation support organizations within six of the technology clusters in which NRC is involved and nearly $1.3 million in non-repayable contributions were made to 30 individual firms within the clusters, toward technological research projects. Examples of cluster successes during the year include a $40 million initial public offering (IPO) of IMRIS Inc., a spin-off of NRC Institute for Biodiagnostics (NRC-IBD) within the Manitoba Biomedical cluster and filing of a patent on a biomarker for prostate cancer jointly between NRC-IIT and the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute, from the New Brunswick information technology cluster.
NRC also continued to develop, build and operate Industry Partnership Facilities (IPFs) across Canada, providing unique facilities that are workplaces for collaborative research and incubation of new firms, including NRC spin-offs. IPFs also serve as resource locations for small- and medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and new enterprises. NRC currently has 15 IPF locations across the country, supporting 140 incubating firms in 2007-08, an increase of 10% from the previous reporting period.
3. Integrated Industry Support that Engages Key Players – Successfully met.
In 2007-08, the NRC Technology and Industry Support (TIS) portfolio worked closely with the NRC R&D portfolio to support the Government of Canada’s commercialization priority under the Entrepreneurial Advantage. Activities to increase the commercialization of research include technology licensing, provision of pre-commercialization assistance, mentoring and provision of business intelligence, access to national and international networks, knowledge dissemination and expertise, as well as helping companies create new products and/or technologies.
Industrial Technology Advisors (ITAs) from NRC utilized in-house developed capabilities to capture competitive technical intelligence to support Canadian industry. This facilitated better decision making on technology investments and research directions for NRC clients. An assessment completed during the year indicated that over the previous five years, NRC-IRAP client firms’ sales grew an average of 28% and overall firm employment grew 30%, with company assets growing by 15%.
NRC provides access to S&T information and intelligence to industry, with sophisticated tools and services to accelerate discovery, innovation and commercialization within Canada’s research and innovation community. During the reporting period, NRC completed 485,000 document orders for clients in the academic, health, government and industry sectors. A new suite of services, under the Discover banner, were launched to provide Canadians with faster and easier access to over 15 million S&T articles in the collection. The NRC Virtual Library provided NRC institute researchers with desktop access to licensed electronic journals and databases, with 258,000 site visits accumulated during the year. NRC continued to publish scientific journals, which have over 13,900 subscribers in 101 countries. In 2007-08, 6,192 authors were published in 16 respected, peer-reviewed journals. NRC published five books during the year, with another nine in production.
4. Program Management for a Sustainable Organization – Successfully met.
Performing leading-edge R&D and supporting Canadian industry to become more technology intensive and innovative requires state-of-the-art equipment and infrastructure, as well as highly skilled scientists, engineers, technicians and other professionals. During the reporting period, NRC established its corporate business plan for the next three fiscal years. The plan outlines an approach to enhance the financial flexibility of NRC, while ensuring financial and non-financial resources are aligned in support of the organization’s priority programs. NRC initiated a new organizational resource allocation process during the fourth quarter of 2007-08, requiring all institutes, programs and branches to develop and submit business plans annually. Funding of initiatives was based on the alignment of individual business plans with the corporate plan and the requirement to help NRC deliver on its priorities and the Federal S&T strategy.
Significant investments in S&T infrastructure were also made during the year. Approximately $5.7 million was invested to address the most pressing infrastructure needs, focusing on health and safety, as well as asset life-cycle management. NRC also continued to invest in internal audit capacity, to assist in maintaining accountability across its program delivery. Five internal audits were conducted during the period and six more initiated. The independent Audit, Evaluation and Risk Management Committee, a sub-committee of NRC Council, which is comprised of members external to NRC, reviewed these reports. From an external audit perspective, NRC is actively addressing the recommendations provided by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG).
This section provides an overview of NRC’s Program Activities and how they contributed to the organization’s strategic outcome and priorities in 2007-08. NRC Program Activities include Research and Development, and Technology and Industry Support. These provide a balance between conducting R&D and delivering technical and innovation support services to industry and the public.
Strategic Outcome
An innovative, knowledge-based economy for Canada through research and development, technology commercialization and industry support.
This program activity includes research programs, technology development initiatives and management of national science and engineering facilities. These efforts all focus on key technological and industrial areas of Canada’s economy where NRC has specific roles and recognized competencies and where it can have a significant impact.
Planned |
Total Authorities |
Actual |
---|---|---|
493.1 |
636.4 |
549.5 |
Planned |
Actual |
Difference |
---|---|---|
3,160 |
3,258 |
(98) |
Performance Indicators |
Results |
---|---|
Technology transfer (patents, licences) |
|
Spin offs/ ins |
|
Publications in refereed journals / proceedings and technical reports |
|
External grants |
|
Leadership and contribution to federal horizontal initiatives |
|
Multi-researcher networks and centres of excellence |
|
Number and value of international collaborative agreements |
|
Increase in research collaborations, licensing, joint patent applications, etc. |
|
Research and innovation are critical to Canada’s future economic growth and an improved quality of life for Canadians. As Canada’s foremost R&D agency, NRC concentrates its efforts on two vital elements of R&D excellence: quality and relevance. In 2007-08, NRC played a key role in helping Canada reach its full potential by performing research in fields that are of current and future importance to the Canadian economy and that addressed important public and Government priorities. To achieve this, NRC worked in collaboration with industry, university and government partners in Canada and abroad. Creating value from knowledge, providing a national S&T infrastructure, maintaining and fostering international alliances and supporting the commercialization of federal R&D are integral parts of NRC’s business.
A new patent is a key step in the continuum from discovery to innovation. The strategic management of IP contributes to the innovative capacity of firms. In 2007-08, NRC applied for 196 new patents and secured 69 patents from applications made in previous years. Forty-nine percent of these were issued in the U.S. – an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recognized measure of competitiveness. Based on a 2003 benchmarking study of best practices in IP management, NRC changed its approach by screening disclosures early; conducting market research and patent analysis assessments; and regularly reviewing its IP portfolio to generate, identify and develop more “high potential commercial value” IP.
By negotiating a licence agreement to use NRC technology, the industrial partner endorses the merit of NRC research and these agreements show a direct flow of innovation into business application. NRC entered into 98 new licence agreements in 2007-08 and IP licensing revenue was $9.47 million (see Figure 2-1).
Just over $4.1 million of IP revenue in 2007-08 was attributed directly to the Meningitis-C vaccine developed by the NRC Institute for Biological Sciences (NRC-IBS). The Institute for Research in Construction (NRC-IRC) received approximately $2.0 million for the use of information published as part of the National Building and Fire codes in individual provincial codes.
Some other examples of NRC technology licensed to industry in 2007-08 include:
Patents, licence agreements and collaborative research agreements are effective indicators of the commercialization outcomes of NRC’s R&D and their contribution to an Entrepreneurial Advantage for Canada.
When NRC develops a technology with particularly strong market potential and there is no Canadian receptor capacity identified, entirely new companies may be created to commercialize the technology. These new companies create innovative products and services for the global marketplace and new jobs for Canadians. In 2007-08, the total new companies created since 1995 remained at 68, accounting for approximately 552 full-time jobs and an estimated $470 million in cumulative investment, an 8% increase from last year. In 2007, investment from all sources into NRC new companies was $87 million.7
Scientific papers in leading peer-reviewed publications and conference proceedings are internationally acknowledged measures of research quality and relevance. They are also a key tool for the dissemination of knowledge and the creation of value for Canada in the long-term. NRC has consistently produced over a thousand peer-reviewed publications each year over the last five years. In 2007-08, researchers published 1,330 articles in refereed journals. NRC researchers also presented 821 papers at S&T conferences and produced 1,541 technical reports for clients (see Figure 2-2).
NRC’s research excellence is also evident in the involvement of its researchers in multi-researcher networks and centres of excellence as well as the number of externally funded, peer-reviewed research grant proposals. In 2007-08, NRC researchers participated in 118 research networks, held 217 positions in editorial boards of scientific journals and were appointed to 473 adjunct professorships in Canadian universities. In 2007-08, NRC researchers and their university partners received 207 grants from Canadian granting agencies (such as NSERC and Genome Canada). The total of these grants, over the lifetime of the projects equalled $29.3 million.
In addition to working with university partners, NRC signed 407 new collaborative research agreements with Canadian partners worth a total of $159 million in 2007-08. The total value over the lifetime of these agreements grew to $493 million (see Figure 2-3). The number and value of collaborative agreements signed during a year are indicators that foretell increased research activity. NRC’s Canadian partners invest $3.10 for every dollar NRC invests.
Participation in international projects and consortia exposes Canadian students, researchers and companies to the best-in-the-world capabilities. In 2007-08, NRC signed 118 new collaborative research agreements with international partners worth $109 million. The total number of active international collaborative agreements is similar to last year’s number (see Figure 2-4), with a total value over the lifetime of the agreements of close to $174 million. NRC’s international partners invest $3.41 for every dollar NRC invests.
Through its 19 research institutes and technology centres, NRC conducts long-term research in virtually every S&T-driven sector of the Canadian economy. In 2007-08, NRC focused on those sectors identified as having economic and social importance to Canada, and within those sectors, concentrated on four research priority areas identified in the federal S&T Strategy, namely environmental science and technologies; natural resources and energy; health and related life sciences and technologies; and information and communication technologies (ICT). In keeping with one of the Strategy’s core principles – partnerships – NRC pursued horizontal initiatives and S&T collaborations among federal departments and agencies and between the federal S&T community and universities, industry, and the non-profit sector. The expected results of this program activity, as outlined in the NRC 2007-08 Report on Plans and Priorities were:
Expected Results:
Achievements against the expected results are highlighted below. The results are organized in terms of contributions to the four priority areas and the core partnership principle of the federal S&T Strategy.
The following highlights progress on research within sectors that have economic or social benefits for Canada, with environmental technology elements.
Facilitated Canada’s technology advantage in next generation aerospace industry – Expected Results 1, 3. Aerospace remains one of Canada's most important advanced technology sectors. The NRC-IAR Aerospace Manufacturing Technology Centre (AMTC) was designed to support the complete aerospace manufacturing supply chain, from SMEs to Aerospace Primes, in the development and implementation of modern manufacturing methods with the potential of cost savings. In 2007-08, the AMCT facilitated the advancement of one SME Tier 3 supplier to the position of a major Tier 2 system integrator. This particular SME utilized the Centre’s Automated Fibre Placement (AFP) machine to assist in the fabrication of fuselage sized composite material aircraft parts. The AFP provides a technology advantage for Canadian industry, as new environmentally friendly composite structures and other large components are quickly becoming prevalent in new aircraft designs. In addition, AMCT developed technology for coordinating robotic riveting and parts assembly within the aerospace industry and technology for high-speed grinding and materials removal. This advanced manufacturing technology was successfully transferred to the Canadian automotive industry.
During the reporting period, NRC-IAR’s Structure and Materials Performance Laboratory continued to advance research in the areas of micro-hardness and elastic modulus, for important developments in nanocrystalline covalent materials. These new materials are for use in aerospace applications, initially in new coatings for gas turbine engines. The manufacture of gas turbine engines is a major component of the Canadian aerospace sector. Using modeling and simulation, NRC identified and selected new materials, which do not yet exist. This innovative approach considerably reduces the time to develop new materials and thereby brings them to market both at a faster and lesser cost than traditional approaches. The NRC-IAR-Gas Turbine Laboratory (GTL) established a preeminent large engine icing certification facility at Mirabel Airport, considered to be among the top three in the world. This facility provides a technology advantage for engine manufacturers, through enhanced cost-effective access to a world-class facility, at a time when alternative international facilities are increasingly schedule-constrained and expensive.
Position Canadian industry as a key player in advanced manufacturing – Expected Results 1, 3, 5. Advanced technologies are a key element to advancing manufacturing capabilities, expertise and ultimately retaining manufacturing employment within Canada. NRC R&D continued its ongoing contributions in this area. NRC-IMI continued to focus on engineering materials and the manufacturing sector. It supported the aluminum technology cluster in Saguenay, Quebec, the Industry Partnership Facility in Boucherville, Quebec and the Canadian automotive industry in London, Ontario. In London, NRC conducted an Opportunity Assessment Study in the fall of 2007, as the first phase of development of its automotive sector strategy. The findings point to potential environmental and energy benefits for the proposed direction of the NRC Automotive key sector on lightweight structural materials and alternative automotive propulsion systems. The study was presented to, and endorsed by, the Automotive Key Sector Steering Committee and NRC’s Senior Executive Committee. During 2007-08, NRC also provided access to sophisticated laboratories to manufactures for conducting pilot projects to demonstrate and validate new manufacturing technologies.
With a focus on energy oriented processes and solution-driven materials to benefit the environment, the Institute for Chemical Process and Environmental Technology (NRC-ICPET) led the Advanced Electrical Storage Project that focused on four elements of technology development for the plug-in hybrid electrical vehicle (pHEV). These are energy storage, electrical drive components, power train optimization and regulations for emissions and fuel efficiency. The program is working with half a dozen Canadian companies who have produced prototypes. New technologies are being made available to industry as they evolve. The Program has registered nine patents and has issued licences to over 30 organizations, enabling the development of high-performance lithium ion cells for pHEVs and associated applications.
Continued to support Canada’s commitment to reduce green house gas emissions and improve the environment – Expected Results 1, 2, 5. Aligning with the federal S&T strategy, a number of NRC research institutes and programs applied their knowledge and competencies to climate change, energy, the environment and sustainable development. NRC-IRC commenced a four year Indoor Air Research Initiative as part of the federal government’s Clear Air Agenda. To date, staff has completed the first phase of construction of the ventilation facility, prepared draft protocols for field experiments on Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and health measures and secured new equipment for: a) the effective and comprehensive detection of contaminants, b) the automation of field measurements and c) the evaluation of IAQ products. In addition, a camera-based sensor for control of electric lighting and window blinds was developed to assist in energy conservation in the presence of natural light or when rooms are unoccupied. In addition, a long-term monitoring system for thermal comfort at individual workstations was developed, with its initial implementation at an office location in Toronto, to capture data for a three-month period. A new portable monitoring system was developed for measuring a host of indoor environmental conditions, with its first application scheduled to be a post-occupancy evaluation of “green” buildings. The long-term objective of this tool is the refinement of “green” building rating schemes.
Environmental technologies for the protection of water resources – Expected Results 1, 5, 7. Fresh water is a critical resource throughout the world, with the protection and remediation of ground and surface water an important element to improving the lives of people, including many Canadians. The NRC-BRI EMaMoc technology for the bioremediation of TCE (a human carcinogen) and other toxic substances from groundwater was transferred to a Canadian company through a licence agreement for commercialization in Canada and in Europe. This technology can help address major groundwater problems where TCE affects drinking water resources in groundwater aquifers, a major source of drinking water to Canadians. NRC-BRI in collaboration with the Université du Québec à Montréal in Quebec also developed a new bio-monitoring tool for the detection of cyanobacteria in surface water and lakes. Toxins produced by cyanobacteria represent a high risk to humans. Cyanobacteria algal blooms have affected several lakes in Quebec limiting the use of water resources to local residents.
The following highlights progress on research within sectors that have economic or social benefits for Canada, with natural resources and energy elements.
Support Canada’s leadership in Fuel Cells – Expected Results 1, 2, 3, 5. Fuel cell technology can provide a significant contribution to lessening the environmental impact we have on the planet. This is an international priority, and Canada has been a leader in the formative development of this technology. The Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation (NRC-IFCI) helped Canadian industry remain at the leading-edge of fuel cell technology. During the reporting period, research led to reducing costs for the manufacture of fuel cells by minimizing the amount of platinum required; improving efficiency through enhanced catalyst layer design and; increasing design integrity and reducing overall design time by utilizing advanced computer modeling tools during the design phase.
NRC-IFCI’s Technology Centre and its Incubation/Acceleration and Networking Facility provided opportunity for SMEs’ technology acceleration, integrated technology demonstrations and industry-university-government partnerships, contributing to Canada’s entrepreneurial advantage. During the reporting period, NRC scientists broke a number of barriers to develop the next generation of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) that work at high temperatures and Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) that work at low temperatures. NRC-IFCI developed Cermet supported SOFCs are becoming the benchmark product for further research in both Canada and Europe.
NRC-IFCI also developed a novel architecture to deal with “dirty” fuels for SOFCs, using a tin anode, which has demonstrated higher performance than conventional technology found in the literature. Increasing the types of fuels usable by fuel cells contributes to wider adoption of the technology, ultimately reducing greenhouse gases.
In addition, the Centre developed an in-depth fuel cell safety methodology for fuel cell laboratories that is being considered for International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification. Furthermore, standards for Hydrogen sensors were developed in collaboration with partners Ballard and Natural Resources Canada and these were approved internationally and adopted as ISO Standards, benefiting the entire Canadian advanced manufacturing industry.
The NRC-IFCI in Vancouver is home to the NRC Fuel Cell Program. This Program mobilized fuel cell expertise and research strength from a network of NRC research institutes across Canada. A total of $6.2 million over five years from 2003-04 through 2007-08 was allocated by the Climate Change Technology and Innovation Program to NRC’s Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Program – a key horizontal initiative. NRC supplemented this investment with an additional $15 million of reallocations from existing A-base. The program has enabled collaboration across NRC and the development of key competencies in this important area. The program ended in March 2008. This year the program produced seven patents/patent applications, 64 published papers and 51 conference presentations. Overall, results for the 5-year program include 31 patent applications, 268 published papers over 50 conference presentations. These outcomes will provide a solid base for the collaborative program being planned this year by NRC, NSERC and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) to focus on near-term technologies, bringing together capabilities within government and in universities to work with industry on fuel cell and hydrogen technology solutions.
In line with Canada’s S&T Strategy, NRC continued to participate in collaborative research initiatives to improve the recovery of energy from traditional sources and develop alternative forms of energy. Within Natural Resources Canada’s Advanced Fuels Technology and Emission Reduction program, NRC-ICPET led the development of a newly patented optically based technology known as Laser-induced Incandescence (LII). This technology helps enforce some of the world’s toughest vehicle emission standards and it is licensed to a broad range of users, from regulatory agencies to vehicle designers. Environment Canada has used LII to measure particulate emissions from advanced vehicle technologies to provide key insights into the tradeoffs between improved fuel efficiency and increased particulate emissions, which is a significant contributor to climate change.
Build sustainability through oceans science – Expected Results 1, 2, 5. Canada’s oceans are a strategic resource of prime importance to humanity, the environment and industry. The Institute for Ocean Technology (NRC-IOT) integrates advanced technologies to achieve innovative solutions to meet the challenges relating to safe and efficient transportation, energy exploration and production, alternative energy, arctic navigation, seabed mapping and information gathering on the state of the oceans. The most advanced technologies for ocean observation and monitoring are autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). During the reporting period, NRC-IOT conducted AUV deployments at the edge of the continental shelf in Newfoundland and under glacial ice off the coast of Greenland. The Institute identified new applications for AUV technology and continued to work with partners to further develop and integrate this technology for advancing ocean science.
The following highlights progress on research within sectors that have economic or social benefits for Canada, with health and life sciences elements.
NRC Genomics and Health Initiative – Expected Results 1, 3, 5. The NRC Genomics and Health Initiative continued to invest in large-scale horizontal research programs focused on bringing the benefits of rapid advances in the genome sciences and health research to a variety of Canadian industrial sectors. In 2007-08, the final year of its third phase of research activity, NRC invested over $22 million in research programs oriented toward diagnosing, treating and preventing human and animal disease, developing technologies for pathogen detection and advancing new technologies for cardiac care and the production of commercially valuable agricultural crops. During the reporting period, the fourth phase of research activity was established, with the focus on research areas that will have socio-economic impact on Canadians including rehearsal systems for brain tumour surgery, productivity of canola crops, point of care diagnostic devices, cancer identification and diagnostic tools for heart attack patients.
Natural health products and nutraceuticals – Expected Results 1, 2, 5. NRC-PBI continued working to enhance the innovative capacity and competitiveness of the Canadian plant-based natural health products industry for the health and wellness of Canadians by leading efforts to create a world recognized plant-based natural health products industry in functional foods, natural health products and nutraceuticals. In 2007-08, NRC established the Bioaccess Commercialization Centre, helping 47 client organizations in Western Canada by providing research expertise, business development support programs, expert business knowledge, resources and advice. Specific programs included BioPitch, a structured hands-on program that teaches entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into a compelling pitch that captures the attention of partners and investors; BioMap, an online resource that takes entrepreneurs from the idea stage to the launch of a new product; and BioFutures, a guide for future technology innovation in the industry. In addition, NRC-PBI performed field trials on plants for two commercially valuable products (nervonic acid for brain health and phytosterols for cardiac health), screened plant extracts from over 100 Western Canadian plants for anti-oxidant, neuro-regeneration and anti-cancer effects, evaluated blueberries, cranberries and grapes to identify bioactives associated with health benefits in fruit and characterized bioactives in hemp, hops and poppies.
Scientists at NRC-INH are also involved in identifying how bioactive compounds found in nature can be used to improve human and animal health. During the reporting period, NRC researchers filed for patent protection for plant extract combinations for cholesterol management, lipid regulation and weight loss. A plant extract for control of pox virus infections was discovered and in cooperation with University of Prince Edward Island researchers, a novel assay to identify compounds to potentially protect against, or limit the damage of strokes was developed.
Vaccines and pharmaceuticals – Expected Results 1, 3, 5. The Biotechnology Research Institute (NRC-BRI) continued collaborating with Canadian pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical players and pursuing research opportunities to support domestic production of vaccines. In particular, NRC:
NRC-IBS also supported this strategy, through:
Less invasive breast cancer diagnosis – Expected Results 3, 5, 7. NRC-IBD continued development of non-invasive examination techniques using MRI technology. The Institute continued to collaborate at the local, national and international levels with leading researchers, academics and industry participants. During the reporting period, significant progress was made in testing specialized MRI spectroscopy techniques, developing analysis protocols for dynamic-contrasted MR images and developing a tool to quantify breast lump borders. Development of a new clinical protocol commenced, in collaboration with a breast radiologist and a full in vivo breast cancer patient study was initiated. This study will continue throughout next year.
Neurochip for drug screening and testing – Expected Results 2, 5. NRC scientists pioneered the development of a neurochip - a complex interface of living neurons or brain tissue with patterned materials and multi-electrode arrays that can potentially be used in drug screening and diagnostic testing. NRC entered advanced discussions with a wide range of potential users of this technology, including academic research laboratories and industrial partners, to prove its efficacy for the study of neurological diseases and the screening of novel pharmaceutical candidates.
Reveal the secrets of brain adaptation and regeneration – Expected Results 3, 5. NRC scientists discovered molecules that could help reduce the burden of Alzheimer’s disease or enhance brain recovery (angiogenesis-modulating peptides) after stroke-induced damage. NRC-IBS continued to develop novel peptides and molecules for early detection or treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, including executing an agreement with a mid-sized Canadian biotechnology company to evaluate new treatments for preventing neuronal loss and alleviating cognitive decline. NRC-IBS and NRC-IMI worked to develop novel advanced materials for tissue engineering for neurovascular repair. The research led to joint intellectual property disclosures, expected to drive the development of new biomaterials engineered to mimic natural tissues and accelerate wound healing, tissue regeneration and repair.
The following highlights progress on information and communications technology with potential applications within sectors that have economic or social benefits for Canada.
Reduce industry risks and costs of working on next generation information and communications technology – Expected Results 1, 2, 3. Globally, information and communications technology development continues at a break-neck pace. The Institute for Microstructural Sciences (NRC-IMS) continued the development of functional materials and quantum devices to fuel the information revolution of the next decade. NRC-IMS is making significant advances in the development of nanomaterials and quantum devices that will help deliver solutions to diverse application areas such as biosensors, chemical sensing and quantum computing. NRC-IMS leads NRC’s ICT Sector Strategy, pulling together competencies from across NRC to launch a demonstration project for an intelligent sensor system.
On the software side, the Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT) continued its development of technologies that facilitate the extraction of knowledge from data, enable people oriented systems and advance e-business protocols. In 2007, discoveries from the Social Networking Applied to Privacy project, led to thirteen peer-reviewed papers, nine invited research presentations and two keynote presentations, as well as a collaborative agreement with the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and the University of Ottawa to apply private data discovery to computer files for enhanced security.
NRC-IIT’s Language Technologies Group, which is part of the Language Technologies Research Centre, continued to focus on developing new technologies related to translation, multilingual content management, language training and speech processing. The ongoing PORTAGE project remained a key activity. The PORTAGE technology underwent a number of improvements during the reporting period, refining its translation capabilities and increasing its speed. The PORTAGE technology was the basis of eight publications and generated eight commercial licences during the year.
Contributions to inter-departmental efforts to support the federal S&T Strategy – Expected Results 1, 2. NRC is actively involved in the interdepartmental effort to implement the new federal S&T Strategy. NRC participates on the ADM Committee on S&T, which is the whole-of-government coordinating committee for the federal S&T community and has been charged with overseeing implementation of the new S&T Strategy and monitoring progress. NRC also has membership on the Director General Sub-Committee on S&T Strategy Implementation (DGSI) and most of the 11 working groups mandated to address specific strategy commitments. NRC is making good progress in implementing a plan developed with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to deliver upon a specific commitment of the federal S&T Strategy—the alignment of these three organizations’ programs and activities. One of the R&D related initiatives was the launch of a joint nanotechnology call for proposals in energy, environment and ICT; and commencement of a round of provincial consultations to better align programs (four provinces visited so far).
The NINT — a NRC, University of Alberta, and Government of Alberta partnership—combines the strengths of a federal laboratory and a university to position Canada at the forefront of nano-scale discoveries that are expected to generate significant benefits in such areas as health and the environment – Expected Results 1, 3, 5. NINT continued to build strong links with industry. This year marked the opening of NINT’s Innovation Centre with the signing of the first 6 industrial tenants and occupancy of over 20% of the available space. This was the culmination of extensive space improvements and development of policies for occupation and operation that includes the option for tenants to use NINT equipment, processes and procedures to assist in their daily operations. In concert with the opening came the launch of six collaborative projects with Xerox Canada. This is the first time that Xerox has engaged an outside partner in their core research objectives, an indication of NRC’s standing as a leader in this area. The projects will explore materials design, materials characterization and modeling and simulation.
Integrated nanotechnology research to promote and advance innovation – Expected Results 1, 2, 3. Nanotechnology is an emerging research domain that cuts across a number of sectors.
NRC-Nano, a cross-NRC initiative, was announced in June 2007 to increase the integration of nanotechnology expertise across NRC, as well as facilitate collaboration with external partners such as other government departments, universities, industry and international research centres.
NRC's nanotechnology research is targeted at three main application areas that directly impact Canadian competitiveness: new materials and coatings; quantum devices for next generation computing and communications; and novel nanostructure devices for photonic, sensing and biological applications. This research spans twelve NRC research institutes and combines a spectrum of competencies ranging from fundamental understanding of the properties of nanostructures, through manufacturing of nanomaterials and nanodevices, to collaborative efforts aimed at applications in aerospace, construction, communication and health related industries. For example, in the construction sector, NRC continued its development of novel materials to increase the service-life of concrete and establish new approaches to nano-engineering concrete structures. It developed new material formulations containing nano-based cement products to control the release of chemical admixtures within concrete. A patent was published and discussions for scaling production to allow testing with concrete are underway with a major private sector enterprise.
Two funding competitions were launched during the reporting period. The first supported three multidisciplinary research projects in the priority areas of therapeutics and diagnostics, nanoscale metrology and nanomaterials for solar energy applications. The second competition is a joint NRC-NSERC-BDC initiative to fund five projects ($5 million per year) in priority areas as part of the federal S&T strategy policy commitment to have existing organizations work effectively together to support the commercialization of research in Canada. The winning projects will develop semiconductor nano-composite materials, photon sources for quantum information processing, polyester nanocomposites and instrumentation for the physical characterization of nano-aerosols, for targeted impacts in the areas of energy, construction and ICT. A joint NRC, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Business Development Bank Canada (BDC) project on Polyester Nanocomposites for Greener Transportation, Construction and Packaging was initiated to develop advanced approaches to cost-effective integration of nano-sized reinforcements and to transfer improved manufacturing technology to Canadian industry. In 2007-08, this joint initiative also launched a series of consultations across Canada to better align the programs of organizations with a stake in increasing commercialization outcomes.
Worked with partners in industry and academia to enable leading-edge research – Expected Results 2, 4, 7. The Canadian Neutron Beam Centre (CNBC), part of NRC-SIMS, enables neutron beam experiments to be undertaken on behalf of universities, industry and government researchers across Canada and internationally. In 2007-08, CNBC applied new neutron beam methods to soft materials and nanostructures and employed a new specialized spectrometer to study new hydrogen storage materials for clean energy. Collaboration between CNBC and NINT/University of Alberta produced direct results in identifying nano-structured magnesium-aluminium hydrides as promising candidates for hydrogen storage in automotive applications, effectively exploiting NRC’s new capability for neutron analysis of nano-structured thin film structures.
In 2007-08, the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) moved two of its affiliated research groups to NRC-BRI to take advantage of both its clinical research and the research and development conducted at NRC-BRI. This collaboration has funnelled external funding to support the valuation and transfer process; identify and prioritize the best potential innovations from both NRC-BRI and MUHC; offer project management for selected technologies; incubate and accelerate the development of technologies; and facilitate the transfer of technologies to the private sector or create spin-off companies to exploit such IP. Specifically, the two organizations continued to work on joint projects related to structural biology and virtual screening, as well as setting up a joint medicinal chemistry laboratory on NRC premises.
NRC-IBS was established as the lead in a multi-stakeholder initiative in molecular imaging for cardiovascular and brain pathologies, involving NRC-IBD, the NRC Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences (NRC-SIMS), NRC-BRI, the NRC Institute for National Measurement Standards (NRC-INMS), NRC-IMI, the University of Calgary, the University of Victoria, McGill University and a small Canadian biotechnology company. An initiative to develop bioactives from natural products for human health applications was established by the NRC Institute for Marine Biosciences (NRC-IMB), the NRC Plant Biotechnology Institute (NRC-PBI), NRC-INH and NRC-IBS.
NRC-PBI identified a novel component of canola seed oil, which could contribute to control of human cholesterol levels. NRC-PBI and NRC-INH continued to work together to test the pharmaceutical effect of canola seed oil with enhanced levels of this component, on the treatment of blood total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triacylglycerides.
Leveraging federal science-based department’s and agencies’ collaborations to support National Security – Expected Results 3, 5. With Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI) funding, NRC-INMS collaborated with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Defence Research and Development Canada and Ionalytics Corporation to develop analytical methodologies for the rapid and highly sensitive detection of chemical warfare agents, toxic agrochemicals and toxins. In addition, a methodology for detection of trace levels of biotoxins within a variety of food matrices was developed. These methodologies have improved Canada’s ability to respond to chemical related threats by decreasing the analysis time from hours to minutes and improving the detection power by an order of magnitude.
The NRC Centre for Surface Transportation Technology worked closely with the Department of National Defence (DND) to provide engineering design and prototyping services for the integration of a full communications suite and electronics counter-measures protection. The three-vehicle system is critical for proving and route clearing potentially dangerous vehicle throughways and thus keeping Canada’s soldiers safe. Detailed knowledge of DND’s Light Armoured Vehicle designs enabled NRC to design and deliver a number of Electronic Warfare equipped vehicles with new, complex electronic sensor and on-board processing capabilities that detect hostile enemy electronic signals.
NRC-IRC collaborated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) on several projects concerning the design and assessment of the speech security of meeting rooms, primarily to determine whether eavesdroppers could hear or understand speech from an adjacent meeting room. The work incorporated both physical measurements of building properties and subjective assessments of speech intelligibility into an accurate rating system. To date, measurement procedures have been developed, building design procedures prepared for preconstruction consideration and a speech security guide written for the practitioner audience. Work is continuing on a new American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standard for measurement, updating the PWGSC Speech Security Best Practices Guide and the development of a quick measurement procedure for use during building construction or renovation.
Support Canada’s long-term competitiveness through the adoption and mutual recognition of international standards – Expected Results 1, 2, 6, 7. Competing in the global marketplace continues to be increasingly important for Canada. NRC-INMS is Canada’s National Metrology Institute (NMI), determining standards and methods of measurement that impact directly on the ability of Canadian firms to trade internationally. In 2007-08, the Institute continued to work internationally, representing Canada in metrology organizations such as Comite international des poids et mesures (CIPM) and the Inter-American Metrology System (SIM). Institute staff participated in 35 CIPM Key Comparisons, which intended to demonstrate the equivalence of separate national measurement standards, ultimately reducing non-tariff trade barriers. Staff also participated on ten CIPM international Consultative Committees (CCs), that guide the development of global measurement standards and oversee international comparisons amongst member organizations.
NRC-INMS analyzed, from a Canadian perspective, an international study on measurement needs in a variety of sectors that documented over 700 innovation impeding measurement issues, as identified by industry. The Institute initiated preparation of a proposal to renew Canada’s measurement innovation infrastructure, based on interviews with stakeholders across industry and NRC. Under the NRC-Nano initiative, funding was received to launch a project on metrology at the nanoscale, which was identified within the international study as a sector requiring new fundamental measurement science.
Leverage "Big Science" partnerships – Expected Results 3, 4, 7. Astronomy is “Big Science” and the leverage of international partnerships opens large and challenging projects to Canadian industry. In 2007-08, the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (NRC-HIA) actively sought industrial participation in its projects and facilitated their engagement in other projects and related business ventures that make use of NRC technical and scientific expertise. Notably, Nanowave Technologies of Etobicoke, Ontario licensed a component of the Band 3 receivers, developed by NRC for the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) , manufacturing the 300 amplifiers needed for ALMA and marketing the technology globally to universities, research labs and semiconductor companies to be used in telecommunication systems, solid state physics research, materials research and low temperature physics research. The French Atomic Energy Commission has already purchased two amplifiers for its advanced nanomaterials research, as has the California-based Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy.
Facilitate the implementation of Canada’s Long Range Plan for Astronomy and Astrophysics (LRP) – Expected Results 4, 7. NRC-HIA executed NRC’s mandate to “operate and administer any astronomical observatories established or maintained by the Government of Canada.” This included activities at telescopes in Victoria and Penticton, as well international facilities including the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and the Gemini Telescopes in Hawaii and Chile. NRC-HIA is a key contributor to Canada’s Long Range Plan for Astronomy and Astrophysics (LRP), participating in key international astronomy projects. In 2007-08, NRC-HIA continued to participate in construction of ALMA and prepared the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) Construction Proposal. A prototype 10m composite antenna was manufactured in-house by an NRC-HIA team for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), attracting considerable international attention as a potential solution to providing the international SKA with low cost, high-performance collecting area. Notable research achievements included the analysis of polarized radio emission from 1200 square degrees of the Milky Way. This is an important step towards understanding the role of magnetic fields in the Milky Way and their influence on the processes of star birth and death. As part of the Institute’s outreach program, the visitor centre in Victoria attracted about 10,000 Canadian schoolchildren and a comparable number of adults.
This program activity includes dissemination of scientific, technical and medical information; provision of innovation assistance and engineering and technology-based facilities; contributions to the commercialization process; intellectual property management; new company creation and strategic partnerships for Canadian SMEs, NRC institutes, the public and other government research organizations.
Planned |
Total Authorities |
Actual |
---|---|---|
219.3 |
229.4 |
221.6 |
Planned |
Actual |
Difference |
---|---|---|
884 |
1,022 |
(138) |
Performance Indicators (as identified in the 2007-08 RPP) |
Results |
---|---|
New firm formation (incubating firms and co-locating firms) |
|
Investment attracted to the cluster |
|
Technology transfer |
|
Knowledge dissemination |
|
Highly-qualified personnel to Canada |
|
Client success |
|
Economic, social and environmental impact |
|
Canada’s private sector is dominated by SMEs, of which 98% have fewer than 100 employees. Within this context, Canadian SMEs often lack the capacity to invest in innovation to take full advantage of the outsourcing and off shoring realities of globalization and realize the opportunity that would make them key players internationally. Clusters are broadly based community partnerships that focus on achieving competitiveness for Canadian industry and, as such, are an appropriate mechanism to encourage SMEs to invest together and share risks in pre-competitive R&D.
Nations around the world have recognized the central role of science and technology in addressing the challenges to competitiveness and productivity caused by the advent of globalization. Many countries have recognized the importance and potential of technology clusters. Business, academia and governments form partnerships. Typically, the partners jointly develop a technology roadmap to identify critical research and technology domains important to the community. This is the basis for coordinated and integrated action.
A cluster’s lifecycle can be broken down into two phases. Phase 1 - the first five years - focuses on augmenting the research and innovation capacity in communities. The second phase focuses on attracting additional private sector partners, a more comprehensive integration of community players, the operation of infrastructure and technology transfer and commercialization.
NRC’s Technology Clusters have encouraged research partnerships between federal, provincial, and municipal governments, industry, and the higher-education sector. Technology Clusters are accelerating the commercialization of new technologies produced by small and medium-sized firms and are building regional S&T capacity in key sectors and industries across Canada, including ocean technologies (St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador), aluminium technologies (Saguenay–Lac-St-Jean, Quebec) and fuel cells and hydrogen technologies (Vancouver, British Columbia).
The Government of Canada has injected staggered investments of $554 million in NRC’s 11 cluster initiatives since 1999-2000. All of NRC’s technology cluster initiatives have received two phases of funding from the Government of Canada. Table 2-1 provides details on the financial resource allocations for the second phase funding cycles to date.
Location | Focus |
Resources |
---|---|---|
2005-06 to 2009-10 |
||
Halifax, NS |
Life sciences (NRC-IMB and NRC-IBD) |
$19.5 million |
Fredericton and Moncton, NB |
Information technology and e-Business |
$48.0 million |
St. John’s, NL |
Ocean technology |
$16.0 million |
Atlantic Canada |
Coordination, administration, special studies, innovation assistance, S&T knowledge/information dissemination |
$26.5 million |
2007-08 to 2009-10 |
||
Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, QC | Aluminium transformation |
|
Ottawa, ON |
Photonics |
$21.1 million |
Winnipeg, MB |
Biomedical technologies |
$4.0 million |
Saskatoon, SK |
Plants for health and wellness |
$3.2 million |
Edmonton, AB |
Nanotechnology |
$34.5 million3 |
Vancouver, BC |
Fuel cell and hydrogen technologies |
$11.5 million |
2008-09 to 2009-10 |
||
Charlottetown, PE |
Nutrisciences and health |
$8.0 million |
Regina, SK |
Sustainable infrastructure |
$4.0 million |
1 - An additional $5.0 million received in 2001-02. |
Delivering on Expected Results
For NRC, conducting world-class research is only part of the journey towards Canadian success within the domestic and global marketplace. NRC is also the bridge that connects industry and key innovation players to this leading research and IP, supporting the development and commercialization of new technology for Canadian firms. NRC programs support a range of industry players, from start-ups and incubating firms to established companies that already compete globally. Wide dissemination of scientific and technical innovations (creating a Knowledge Advantage) to Canada’s industrial, research, and academic communities (creating a People Advantage), ultimately leads to enhanced Canadian economic activity through commercialization of new technologies (creating an Entrepreneurial Advantage). The remainder of this section illustrates how NRC achieved the expected results of this program activity, which were:
Expected Results:
Achievements against the expected results are highlighted below. The results are organized in terms of contributions to the three advantages of the federal S&T Strategy.
Engage and link community groups through horizontal support (NRC-IRAP and NRC-CISTI) – Expected Results 1, 2, 4, 6. In 2007-08, NRC-IRAP continued to engage and link regional groups to develop further the technical, financial and business networks vital to cluster development. This year, NRC-IRAP contributed $1.55 million of NRC cluster funding to 45 different innovation support organizations within six NRC technology clusters, which ensured that SMEs had access to needed pre-commercialization support. This included NRC-IRAP support to industry-driven organizations that promoted regional technology clusters, such as Newfoundland’s OceansAdvance, PEI’s BioAllliance, Saskatchewan’s Biomedical Commercialization Canada and Manitoba’s BioAccess Commercialization Centre.
NRC-IRAP also directly contributed to the growth of 30 individual firms within the NRC clusters by providing a total of $1.28 million non-repayable contributions, on a cost-shared basis for their respective technological research projects. NRC-IRAP fully expended its NRC cluster funding, leveraging an additional $15 million of R&D expenditure within seven technology clusters in which NRC participates.
During 2007-08, NRC-CISTI’s Information Intelligence Services program offered a range of products and services to NRC-IRAP industrial technology advisors and their SME clients through a network of specialists in 17 communities from coast to coast. NRC-CISTI staff, who are co-located in 9 regional technology clusters, provided scientific, technical, medical and business-related information, search and analysis services to NRC researchers, companies located in industrial partnership facilities and external clients within the region.
In addition, NRC-CISTI provided regional clients with more than just access to scientific, technical and medical information, as it provided answers supporting business decisions. NRC-CISTI provided NRC-IRAP industrial technology advisors with competitive technical intelligence (CTI) that contributed to successful regional client SME commercialization outcomes. CTI has demonstrably led to reduced risk of NRC-IRAP investments and commercial success for SMEs. The information and analyzes helped to establish the technical feasibility and market potential of a product, strengthened business cases and identified potential partners. Impact statements collected from participants in 2007‑08 include:
Enhance collaborative partnerships – Expected Results 2, 5, 6. In 2007-08, NRC increased its efforts to develop collaborations and partnerships with industry and engage stakeholders to contribute to the development of clusters across Canada. NRC-IRAP is a key integrator and attractor and brings synergy to the clusters. NRC-IRAP’s approach to building and supporting technology clusters differs from and builds on, its usual method of reacting to a specific firm need. The cluster approach is community, not firm-based; proactive, not reactive; benefits are intended to accrue to all players within the cluster supply chain, not just one firm; and support is targeted to the specific needs of the cluster’s stage of development, not on one organization’s readiness. As one example, in 2007-08, NRC-IRAP supported New Brunswick SMEs in the fields of knowledge management and semantic web techniques, helping them collaborate on proposals for national tenders to attract business opportunities flowing from the rest of Canada. Additionally, over the last three years, numerous small contracts in the areas of website creation, international website standards analysis and graphic design have led to various collaborations between members of this network. The network enabled members to become better acquainted with one another and to develop an interest in collaborating through their own initiatives. This year members of the Centre international de développement de l'inforoute en francais (CIDIF) network identified a major opportunity, prepared a joint proposal and were awarded a contract from Canadian Heritage for a project titled “Knock on Wood” worth approximately $400,000.
Focus on cluster growth to create critical mass and build community innovation capacity – Expected Results 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The successful growth of dynamic technology clusters will not be the result of a single organization – clustering is a collaborative and iterative process that requires active commitment from all stakeholders. NRC contributed to the growth of Canadian technology clusters by:
The following are examples of cluster initiatives that NRC moved forward in 2007-08:
Build on successes from NRC’s Atlantic Initiatives, Phase I – Expected Results 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. NRC continued to nurture the growth of its Atlantic cluster initiatives by maintaining leading-edge research capabilities (infrastructure and human capital), developing research collaborations with cluster firms, fostering increased networking and knowledge-sharing and supporting the involvement of firms and other partners in the cluster.
Build on the success of the Information Intelligence Services program – Expected Results 1, 5, 6. NRC-IRAP and NRC-CISTI continued to develop capacity to provide CTI and information analysis services in order to provide best-in-class strategic advice to cluster participants and optimize NRC investments. NRC-CISTI’s Information Intelligence Services offered a range of products and services to R&D clients across the country, as highly-trained technical business analysts prepared reports to facilitate client decisions on technology investments and research directions. NRC-IRAP developed in-house capabilities to capture CTI. ITAs capitalized on CTI to support their capability to provide advisory services to clients and to help them make the best possible investments with client firms. Client satisfaction is high, with a recent survey of Atlantic Region NRC-IRAP industrial technology advisors rating the CTI service at 4.6 out of 5.
Offer Scientific and Technical information and intelligence – a Knowledge Advantage to Canadian industry – Expected Results 1, 5, 6. NRC-CISTI is Canada’s national science library and one of the largest comprehensive source of scientific, technical and medical information in North America. Through its publishing arm, NRC Research Press, NRC-CISTI is also Canada’s foremost scientific publisher. NRC-CISTI's information specialists, technical business analysts and technical information analysts provide value-added information services and competitive technical intelligence reports to NRC-IRAP SMEs, NRC researchers and other clients through the NRC Information Centers co-located with NRC institutes across Canada.
In 2007-08, NRC-CISTI continued to provide Canada’s research and innovation community with tools and services for accelerated discovery, innovation and commercialization of research. It created value for Canadians by improving the flow of scientific information in three ways:
NRC-CISTI’s National Science Library document delivery service filled 485,000 document orders in 2007-08, half from Canadians. Core clients were in the academic, health, government and industry sectors, with 29 clients from amongst the top 60 R&D spenders in Canada. NRC-CISTI continued to innovate, launching a suite of services under the Discover banner to give Canadians faster and easier access to 15 million articles in the collection, which is being strengthened in the areas of health, the nine key R&D sectors identified in the NRC strategy and resources to support commercialization of research. The NRC Virtual Library provided NRC institute researchers with desktop access to licensed electronic journals and databases. This past year NRC-CISTI significantly expanded NRC researcher access to scientific, technical and medical research publications by subscribing to Scopus, a searchable database of article abstracts with citations from 15,000 peer-reviewed journals as well as conference proceedings, patents and other content from around the world. NRC professionals made 258,000 NRC Virtual Library site visits in 2007-08, an increase of 12.5% over the previous year.
In 2007-08, NRC provided funding for the development of the NRC Publications Archives, a NRC-CISTI-hosted open access repository of research papers and articles authored by researchers across NRC, who collectively produce more than 3,500 articles per year. Free access to NRC publications increased the visibility and impact of federally-funded research in Canada and around the world. CISTI Lab, an open virtual platform for demonstrating and evaluating prototype knowledge discovery applications such as text mining, visualization tools and research paper citation analysis, was implemented in 2007.
The NRC Research Press publishes 16 scientific journals with 13,900 subscribers in 101 countries. In 2007-08, 6,192 authors were published in these respected peer-reviewed journals. In addition, the Press publishes 15 journals on behalf of client scholarly societies. The 31 journals combined represent 40% of the scientific, technical and medical journals published in Canada. Of the 30 editors, 28 are Canadians with a Ph.D. level education; 9 editorial offices are co-located at Canadian universities, enhancing the global reputations of these professors and their faculties and universities. In addition, the Press published 5 books in 2007-08, with another 9 in production, most available in both print and electronic formats.
The Press leads in Canadian electronic publishing innovation: its 16 journals are published in electronic format, 14 of which now include multimedia publishing capacity and reference linking. The project to digitize journal back issues – a million pages - was completed in 2007 making decades of Canadian research only a few clicks away. A project to digitize more than 75 years of The Forestry Chronicles back issues was also completed. The federal Depository Services Program funds free electronic access to 15 Research Press journals by Canadians. About 600,000 article downloads in 2007 validates the importance of this scientific resource. The Press continues to explore open access business models, launching the fee-based Open Article option in January 2008 that offers authors the choice of making their articles available free upon publication.
The Information Intelligence Services program specialists locate, filter and analyze information, meeting a growing and crucial need for Canadian entrepreneurs in an era of information overload, fast innovation and international competition. In 2007‑08, there were 19,500 literature searches, patent analyzes, reports and other deliverables supplied to NRC institute and cluster clients and an additional 2,900 deliverables to IRAP ITAs. In 2007-08, the program expanded to provide services on a cost-recovery basis. For example, these services are contracted to the Centre québécois de valorisation des biotechnologies until 2010, the first agreement with a non-governmental organization.
Attracting and Retaining Highly-Skilled Workers – Expected Results 1, 4. In January 2008 the opening occurred of the Biomedical Magnetic Resonance Imaging Lab (BMRL), located in the IWK Health Centre, Halifax. This is a direct result of a thriving collaborative partnership between IWK and the National Research Council (NRC). The state-of-the-art research facilities will attract world-class researchers and physicians. Improved health outcomes will result from the sophisticated technology-driven assessment approaches used in the new lab.
Providing Work Experience to Canada’s Youth – Expected Results 1, 4. The renewal of the NRC-IRAP’s terms and conditions allows the NRC-IRAP to continue to deliver two federal Youth Employment Strategy (YES) initiatives. These initiatives allow graduates to gain valuable work experience and firms access to up-to-date skills and expertise. In 2007-08, there was an increase in the graduate placements with approximately 675 graduates including 331 new graduates provided with the opportunity to work with 454 SMEs across Canada ($4.99 million from Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) and $1.15 million from NRC-IRAP).
Community Outreach – Expected Results 1, 4. In 2007-08, NRC took over the leadership of the Canadian National Marsville Program – a national science promotion initiative that involves some 3,000 grade 6-8 students from across Canada who work in teams to solve problems and develop a simulated Mars habitat. This Program is being expanded to encompass other regions, with a goal of having a site in every province and territory. NRC is also actively engaged in the Science Culture and Entrepreneurship initiative being led by NSERC and Industry Canada.
These activities are in addition to NRC’s other science outreach programming including National Science and Technology Week, National Engineering Week, Sanofi-Aventis Biotalent Competition, the S&T Awareness Network and others, as well as its nation-wide distribution of hundreds of thousands of education materials to schools across Canada such as the Periodic Table of the Elements, Biotechnology fact sheets, and the Canadian Skies posters. Of note, the visitor’s centre at the NRC-Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia, was selected in recent yearsas one of the top 10 places for families to visit by the Victoria vacation guide.
Expand network of Industrial Partnership Facilities (IPFs) – Expected Results 1, 2, 4. In support of its cluster development activities, NRC continued to develop, build and operate Industry Partnership Facilities (IPFs) across Canada. These unique facilities are workplaces for collaborative research and the incubation of new firms and NRC spin-offs. They also serve as community resources for access to mentoring, innovation financing and competitive technical intelligence for new enterprises. In 2007-08, NRC had 15 IPF locations across the country with a complement of 140 incubating firms. With the addition of a new facility opening in Edmonton in 2007-08, the total space available in NRC IPFs is 30,458 square metres.
|
Location |
Total Area (m2) |
Status |
Completion Date |
% occupied |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Institute for Ocean Technology (St John’s, Newfoundland) |
441 |
in operation |
2003-04 |
100% |
2 |
Institute for Marine Biosciences (Halifax, Nova Scotia) |
1,036 |
in operation |
2004-05 |
85% |
3 |
Institute for Information Technology (Fredericton, New Brunswick) |
627 |
in operation |
2002-03 |
88% |
4 |
Biotechnology Research Institute (Montreal, Quebec) |
9,800 |
in operation |
1997-98 |
92% |
5 |
Industrial Materials Institute (Boucherville, Quebec) |
2,180 |
in operation |
2003-04 |
61% |
6 |
NRC Industry Partnership Facility, M-50 (Ottawa, Ontario), (shared facility with several Institutes) |
1,604 |
in operation |
1998-99 |
96% |
7 |
NRC Industry Partnership Facility, M-23A (Ottawa, Ontario), (shared facility with several Institutes) |
297 |
in operation |
2004-05 |
63% |
8 |
100 Sussex Industry Partnership Facility (Ottawa, Ontario), (shared facility with several Institutes) |
509 |
in operation |
2003-04 |
138%1 |
9 |
Institute for Biodiagnostics (Winnipeg, Manitoba) |
1,194 |
in operation |
2005-06 |
70% |
10 |
Plant Biotechnology Institute (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) |
7,314 |
in operation |
2002-03 |
100% |
11 |
Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation (Vancouver, British Columbia) |
1,209 |
in operation |
1999-2000 |
95% |
12 |
Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (Penticton, British Columbia)2 |
1413 |
in operation |
2001-02 |
59% |
13 |
Institute for Nutrisciences and Health (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island) |
477 |
in operation |
2006-07 |
83% |
14 |
Institute for Aerospace Research (Montreal, Quebec) |
929 |
in operation |
2006-07 |
13% |
15 |
NINT Innovation Centre (Edmonton, Alberta) |
2,700 |
in operation |
2007-08 |
23% |
|
Total |
30,4584 |
1 - due to increased space demands, Institute made additional space available to firms
2 - space previously designated as IPF space in Victoria has been allocated to LRP work (NRC-HIA)
3 - additional space allocated to the Okanagan Research and Innovation Centre (ORIC) (NRC-HIA)
4 - due to an addition error the total area of IPFs was reported as 30,448 m2 in 2006-07. The correct area should have been 30,458 m2
Develop a medium for regional delivery of national initiatives – Expected Results 1, 3, 4, 6. By establishing regional networks of clusters of firms and other community stakeholders, NRC is ensuring that its national R&D and commercialization support programs are accessible and remain regionally relevant. Overall, NRC’s cluster initiatives give Canada’s national R&D organization the capacity to:
Encourage more involvement / commitment of cluster partners – Expected Results 1, 2, 3, 5. In 2007-08, NRC followed-up on the results and lessons learned from the evaluations of its cluster initiatives.
Integrated Industry Support that Engages Key Players – Expected Results 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. To support the Government of Canada’s S&T Strategy, and in particular its commercialization priority, the NRC TIS portfolio worked closely with the NRC R&D portfolio to increase commercialization outcomes. This included technology licensing; provision of pre-commercialization assistance, mentoring and business intelligence to Canadian firms; access to vital national and international networks; knowledge dissemination and expertise; and helping companies create new products and/or new technologies. In addition, it collaborated with key partners to develop strategic initiatives to accelerate the successful competitiveness/commercialization of new technologies. TIS also helped to fuel the growth and innovative capacity of SMEs and continued to streamline its approach to intellectual property management and the transfer of technology.
Build innovation capacity within SMEs – Expected Results 1, 4, 5. Since its inception, close to 60 years ago, NRC-IRAP has provided support to Canadian SMEs, broadening its purpose from a limited focus on technology transfer to its current strategic objective of increasing the innovative capabilities of Canadian SMEs. Today, NRC-IRAP provides comprehensive innovation assistance to technology-based SMEs in almost every industrial sector of importance to Canada’s current and future economic development. SMEs engaging in high-risk, technologically sophisticated R&D face increasingly complex challenges. NRC-IRAP supported these technology-based SMEs in growing and becoming more competitive by focusing on: increasing the rate of growth of SMEs; expanding the number of SMEs that successfully commercialize their products, services and processes; assisting with potential international collaborations on technology development projects; and providing international opportunities to clients looking to gain knowledge to advance their R&D projects.
The 2007 NRC-IRAP Impact Evaluation report8 stated “…NRC-IRAP client firms have experienced growth, both in real and comparative terms. Over the five year evaluation period (2002-03 to 2006-07) client firm sales grew on average by just over 28%, overall firm employment grew by 30% and company assets grew on average by 15%... By contributing to the development of research and development capacity, the overall growth of SMEs, the commercialization of new products, services and process, as well as the creation of new knowledge and intellectual property, NRC-IRAP has positively stimulated overall innovation in Canadian SMEs and in Canada as a whole.”
Offer comprehensive commercialization support, including technology transfer and intellectual property management – Expected Results 1, 3, 6. During 2006-07, NRC undertook an in-depth examination of all its industry support programs, policies and practices as part of a project called Business Review. This project was launched to ensure NRC was well-equipped and well-positioned to carry out client-based activities described in NRC’s Strategy, Science at Work for Canada. Recommendations from the Business Review project included: working increasingly on an industry-sector basis; increasing NRC’s capacity to develop industrially relevant technologies and their commercialization; and ensuring NRC’s internal operations make it easier for its institutes and programs to serve clients. The recommendations also included establishment of a corporate business group.
Central Business Services – Expected Results 1, 5, 6. In early 2007, the NRC Senior Executive Committee approved the recommendations from the Business Review project, including a one-year pilot expansion of the corporate business group. The expanded corporate business group provided targeted support to NRC’s key industry sectors, ensuring that their planning activities in 2007-08 received the industry sector and market focus required to address adequately client needs and opportunities. At the end of the reporting period, the pilot was deemed a success, culminating in the permanent establishment of the Central Business Support (CBS) group.
Improve NRC’s Intellectual Property Management – Expected Results 1, 3, 5, 6. Guided by both a 2003 benchmarking study of best practices in IP management and the results of the Business Review project (described above), NRC continued to strengthen its IP management. This work was a priority of the pilot-project CBS group, which successfully launched a project called Disclosure Review to examine NRC’s invention disclosures for both IP protection and patentability. NRC institutes utilized the results from the project to guide their research, protection and marketing strategies. Additionally, CBS offered technology assessment services and increased access to market research tools to NRC institutes. Collaborations with NRC-CISTI were initiated to assist NRC clients with market and patent examinations. Specific activities included increased focus on high value IP; increased use of technology assessments; increased market research tools and, adoption of the world’s best practices and tools.
Contributions to inter-departmental efforts to support the federal S&T Strategy – Expected Results 1, 4, 6. NRC is actively involved in the interdepartmental effort to implement the new federal S&T Strategy. NRC participates on the ADM Committee on S&T, which is the whole-of-government coordinating committee for the federal S&T community and has been charged with overseeing implementation of the new S&T Strategy and monitoring progress. NRC also has membership on the Director General Sub-Committee on S&T Strategy Implementation (DGSI) and most of the 11 working groups mandated to address specific strategy commitments; NRC is leading two of these working groups.
In terms of NRC’s leadership of these two working group, NRC is making good progress in implementing a plan developed with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to deliver upon a specific commitment of the federal S&T Strategy—the alignment of these three organizations’ programs and activities. Key progress to date includes: finalizing an action plan; the establishment of a governance structure with a steering committee, creation of a working group and five regional “hub” committees; co-location of staff from the three organizations; increasing awareness of each others programs; and initiation of pilot projects in shared due diligence. Work will be undertaken in 2008 to consider how the alignment exercise could be broadened to include other federal organizations.
NRC has also been co-leading with Industry Canada an interdepartmental effort to review federal intellectual property policies announced in the S&T Strategy. Two background studies, a literature review and a map of whole-of-government and organization-specific IP policies and practices, were completed in March 2008. A final report, with recommendations for addressing key issues of concern and opportunities, is expected in fall 2008.
Program Activity |
Actual Spending 2007-08 ($ million) |
Alignment to Government of Canada Outcome Area |
||
---|---|---|---|---|
Budgetary |
Non-budgetary |
Total |
||
Program Activity: Research and Development |
549.5 |
|
549.5 |
An innovative and knowledge-based economy |
Program Activity: Technology and Industry Support |
221.6 |
|
221.6 |
Strong economic growth |
NRC's Research and Development Program Activity contributes to an innovative and knowledge-based economy by undertaking, assisting and promoting scientific and industrial research. NRC is the federal government's primary provider of research and research facilities. It pursues cutting-edge R&D that supports the growth of Canadian industry and uncovers solutions to national challenges in health, climate change, the environment, clean energy, and other fields. NRC identifies Canada's S&T opportunities and adapts its scientific research and development activities to meet national needs and priorities.
NRC’s Technology and Industry Support Program Activity contributes to strong economic growth through is industry and commercialization support. Canadian companies access the program’s leading-edge knowledge and technology through collaborative agreements and partnerships; and commercialize products and services by licensing the use of NRC’s patents. Leading-edge technology opens new markets to Canadian companies and provides them with a competitive advantage in the world market. A strong domestic economy benefits Canadians.
In addition, NRC contributes indirectly to the Government of Canada outcome areas: A Clean and Healthy Environment and Healthy Canadians. Environmental stewardship is not only driven through policy, but through technological capability as well. NRC provides leading-edge research into alternative energy technologies, such as fuel cells and hydrogen and contributes to advanced and efficient manufacturing within the automotive and aerospace sectors. R&D activities centering on oceans and bioremediation also contributed toward a sustainable healthy environment for Canadians and the entire world. NRC contributes to improving the health of Canadians through R&D activities targeted at nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals and innovative medical diagnostics and treatment protocols. Harnessing the characteristics of plants for improving health is a growing field and NRC research is helping Canadian companies along this path.
Comparison of Planned to Actual Spending (incl. Full-time Equivalents) |
|
Voted and Statutory Items |
|
Sources of Respendable Revenues |
|
Resource Requirement by Branch or Sector |
|
A. User Fee Act |
|
Details on Project Spending |
|
Details on Transfer Payments Programs (TPPs) |
|
Horizontal Initiatives |
|
Response to Parliamentary Committees and External Audits |
|
A. Internal Audits B. Evaluations |
|
Travel Policies |
|
Financial Statements |
2007-08 |
||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Forecast Revenue |
Actual Revenue |
Full Cost |
Performance Standard1 |
Performance Results1 |
$270 |
$270 |
$177,440 |
Response provided within 30 days following receipt of request; the response time may be extended pursuant to Section 9 of the ATIA. Notice of extension to be sent within 30 days after receipt of request. |
NRC received 57access to information requests and 17 consultations from other government departments. |
|
Total |
$177,440 |
|
Planning Years |
||
---|---|---|
Fiscal Year |
Forecast Revenue |
Estimated Full Cost |
2008-09 |
$500 |
$250,000 |
2009-10 |
$500 |
$250,000 |
2010-11 |
$500 |
$250,000 |
Total |
$1,500 |
$750,000 |
1 - Note: According to prevailing legal opinion, where the corresponding fee introduction or most recent modification occurred prior to March 31, 2004:
NRC manages the following transfer payment programs:
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1) Name of Transfer Payment Program: Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC-IRAP) |
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2) Start Date: 1962-1963 |
3) End Date: ongoing |
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4) Description: |
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5) Strategic Outcomes:
Immediate and Intermediate Outcomes
Networking Outcomes
Ultimate Outcomes
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6) Results Achieved: FINANCIAL AND ADVISORY OUTCOMES i) Increased SME technical R&D capability and capacity
ii) Increased SME management, marketing and finance capability and capacity
iii) Growth of firms as a result of technology development project support
NETWORKING OUTCOMES i) Enhanced SME connections to technology and business networks to source support
ii) Increased innovation-related services available to SMEs
iii) Greater number and stronger innovation players with increased consortia within the community
iv) Increased adoption/commercialization/collaboration with respect to international endeavours
v) Increased understanding of international opportunities Assisted SMEs in connecting with international programs, sources of technology and technical intelligence:
|
1) Name of Transfer Payment Program: Tri-University Meson Facility (TRIUMF) |
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2) Start Date: 1976 |
3) End Date: 31 March 2010 |
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4) Description: TRIUMF, Canada's national facility for research in subatomic physics, is located on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. It has been operated since 1968 by a consortium of four Western universities – the University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia – under a joint venture agreement. |
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5) Strategic Outcomes:
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6) Results Achieved:
|
1) Name of Transfer Payment Program: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, Gemini Telescopes |
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2) Start Date: 1978 (CFHT) |
3) End Date: December 2012 (National Science Foundation of the U.S. in support of the Gemini Telescopes) |
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4) Description: NRC, in partnership with other international bodies, provides financial contributions that support the management and operations of these telescopes and their related facilities and participates in the oversight and direction of the facilities and research. |
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5) Strategic Outcomes:
Immediate Outcomes:
Intermediate Outcomes:
Ultimate Outcomes:
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6) Results Achieved: Gemini Instrumentation Other Research Achievements Analysis of polarized radio emission from 1200 square degrees of the Milky Way has led to a better understanding of the role of magnetic fields in the Milky Way and their influence on the processes of star birth and death. Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) Collaboration with Industry Outreach
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16. Expected Results for 2007-08 |
17. Results Achieved in 2007-08 |
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1. Commercially relevant advances in areas of genomics R&D related to human health (e.g., genetic testing, diagnostics, microbial genomic applications, treating and preventing human diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease and pathogen detection). |
1.1 Researchers discovered a new family of antibodies that can play a role in preventing tumour invasion by blocking the function of secreted Clusterin, a glycoprotein associated with human cancers that play a role in cell survival or death. By inhibiting gene function in cancer cells, it is possible to enhance the effects and efficiency of cell reaction and sensitivity to chemotherapy and other drug mediated therapeutics. A Canadian biotech company, Alethia Biotherapeutics, entered into a licensing agreement with NRC in 2007-08 for the worldwide therapeutic and diagnostic rights to Clusterin-specific antibodies. 1.2 NRC is developing portable and efficient “all-in-one” diagnostic devices to detect human pathogens. The objective is to create low-cost diagnostic tools that can be produced industrially for commercial applications that will rapidly identify human pathogens and provide instant read-outs eliminating conventional lengthy lab procedures. In a first step towards this goal, in 2007-08 researchers developed a ‘personal microarray spotter’ – a powerful miniature device used to spot and analyze many protein samples simultaneously. With further development, personal microarray spotters may revolutionize genomic/proteomic research in the laboratory and play a larger role in how researchers and clinicians understand, diagnose and treat a vast array of diseases or pathogens - from pesky allergens to pathogens such as Salmonella and E-Coli. |
2. Improvements in crop value in cereals, soybean and canola through quality improvements in areas related to plant adaptation to biotic and abiotic stresses (e.g., resistance to disease, tolerance to drought and cold), as well as seed development and metabolism (e.g., related to oil content for biofuels and nutraceutical applications). |
2.1 A functional analysis of Brassica (e.g., canola) seed development and metabolic processes was undertaken to improve Brassica seed quality traits. NRC researchers discovered a gene that can boost productivity and resilience of canola; DNA sequences suggest that the gene, which produces a hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (HSD) protein, is involved in steroid metabolism and has a profound impact plant growth. Researchers over-expressed the gene to create "transgenic" plants that produce higher levels of the HSD protein than typically found in normal plants. The experiment resulted in taller, stronger and more durable plants with increased seed production and an average oil yield that exceeded regular control plants by roughly 23%. This has the potential to help Canadian canola growers produce more oil for food applications, as well as increase oil production to meet the growing demand for biodiesel fuel. 2.2 Wheat is the largest crop in Canada with approximately 9 million hectares. Leaf rust, caused by Puccinia triticina, results in yield losses of 5-20% annually and is the most common disease of wheat worldwide. AAFC has an outstanding reputation as a world leader on the genetic control of leaf rust with 30 of the 59 leaf rust resistance genes discovered by AAFC researchers. To analyze genetically avirulence P. triticina mapping populations, linkage groups containing avirulence genes and molecular markers were developed by AAFC CCGI researchers. During 2007, simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were incorporated into these linkage maps. The process of somatic fusion in P. triticina was also investigated for the first time using a combination of bright field and flourescence microscopy. This pioneering work is helping to explain how the important process of asexual recombination physically takes place. The P. triticina population in Canada during 2007 and in previous years was assayed for virulence and the recently developed SSR markers to determine the relationships among the virulence phenotypes and track the development and origin of new and emerging races. These data will help to explain the population structure of this important wheat pathogen and give clues to the evolution of the various North American virulence phenotypes. 2.3 In 2007-08, AAFC researchers identified a key gene, Lhk1 that enables legumes to host nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Using this discovery AAFC researchers plan to develop a way to transfer nitrogen-fixing ability to non-legume crops. This breakthrough could lead to the development of ecological and cost effective alternatives to certain industrial fertilizers, which could bring enormous environmental and financial benefits to Canada. Nitrogen makes up more than 80% of the earth's atmosphere and is essential to the growth of all living organisms. However, atmospheric nitrogen cannot be directly accessed by most plants or animals until it is incorporated into organic compounds by biological nitrogen fixation or other natural processes. As a result, today's farming practices require the annual application of approximately 90 million tons of nitrogen based fertilizer to agricultural land. Although inorganic fertilizers provide crops with essential nutrients, such practices come at an enormous cost, primarily due to the immense amount of energy required for the production of fertilizers and their propensity to run off, which contributes to pollution of the environment. Biological nitrogen fixation provides more than twice the amount of industrially produced nitrogen to natural and agricultural ecosystems in a manner that is both sustainable and environmentally friendly. If the ability to host nitrogen-fixing bacteria could be extended to even one lucrative crop, such as corn or rice, the results would constitute a second 'green revolution' with clear benefits to producers and the environment. 2.4 The soilborne fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum causes white mould on a broad range of crops, including soybean and canola. In order to aid in the identification of genes that are critical for pathogenicity and fungal survival, researchers at AAFC developed an efficient method for Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated gene disruption in S. sclerotiorum. It is anticipated that the application of this tool to molecular genetic studies of S. sclerotiorum will contribute to an improved understanding of the molecular factors that control pathogenesis and survival structure development and could be targeted for disease management. 2.5 The soil borne pathogen Phytophthora sojae causes root rot and damping off of soybean. Race-cultivar compatibility between the pathogen and its host is controlled by discrete genes. Thus, P. sojae avirulence (Avr) genes can restrict the pathogen and determine which cultivars of soybean are resistant or susceptible to disease. In 2007-08 AAFC researchers identified at least three different P. sojae Avr genes; Avr1a, Avr3a and Avr3c. The discovery of Avr genes will lead to a more rational approach to breeding, diagnostics and cultivar deployment and help in the control of P. sojae in the field. It will also lead to a better mechanistic understanding of disease and how it may be managed. 2.6 Seed is perhaps the most important end product of plant agriculture. Improvement of seed quality requires thorough understanding of how seeds develop, particularly the seed maturation phase. Seed storage proteins are hall markers of seed maturation. AAFC’s efforts have been focused on identification of genetic repressors of storage protein genes. Researchers at AAFC identified six genes as repressors of seed storage protein genes in vegetative organs. These works provide new insight into the control of seed maturation genes. Knowledge gained from this work will contribute to the manipulation of seed quality traits and will be useful for developing seeds as a molecular farming system for producing proteins of high value. 2.7 Fusarium graminearum, a fungal plant pathogen that causes head blight of wheat and barley and ear rot of maize, not only reduces grain yield and quality, but also contaminates the grain with toxic metabolites that are a threat to human and animal health. Efforts in 2007-08 by AAFC researchers resulted in the development of a large collection of genes expressed by Fusarium graminearum in a range of growth conditions and especially during host invasion. One of the unexpected and striking findings is the presence within the genome of highly variable and gene-rich regions harbouring genes potentially associated with pathogenicity. |
3. Sustainable management of aquatic resources through the use of genomics tools to: manage fishery openings; generate increased understanding of population genetics and structure; further understanding of behavioural, physiological and immunological responses to the environment; and through the management of aquatic animal diseases. |
3.1 To better manage fishery openings and understand the changing behaviour of fish stocks due to climate change and pollution, genomics tools including gene expression profiling are used by DFO to determine physiological changes along the migration route to natal streams that is associated with early entry, a behavioural shift in late run Fraser River sockeye salmon. Results to date indicate that osmoregulatory readiness was not used to cue the timing of river entry but may be important to successful migration within the river. It has been shown that there is a strong physiological association of gill expression with fate in the river. As well, biomarkers were identified that are associated with gross somatic energy reserves, maturation processes, navigation strategies and cueing systems, osmoregulatory preparedness and temperature response. A tremendous breadth of new knowledge on salmon migration physiology was gained. Predictive biomarkers are being developed for monitoring relevant genes to enable pre-season prediction of migration behaviour and fish survival for fishery managers. 3.2 Research to efficiently and effectively identify genetic differences between two morphologically similar mussel species Mytilus edulis and M. trossulus and determine the relative distribution of these species within Nova Scotia is being undertaken by DFO, with support from industry and the province of Nova Scotia. Genetic markers have been tested and optimized for higher throughput lower cost species identification in mussels. Results in 2007-08 indicate that there are very different species compositions at locations that are adjacent to each other and have identified sites suitable for mussel seed collection for use in aquaculture in Nova Scotia, thereby helping to overcome the impacts from the restriction of movement of species from areas with aquatic invasive species. 3.3 Infectious diseases present a significant economic burden to finfish aquaculture industries and there is concern that diseases may also negatively impact wild fish populations. Genomic approaches are being used by DFO to better understand the diversity of viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) and to relate this diversity to host responses to infection, disease development and recovery or resistance to, clinical disease. Multiple isolations of VHSV from marine waters off the coast of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and British Columbia have been genetically analyzed and this information has been used to develop a database for use in rapid identification and analysis of isolates. Recently, VHSV has been detected in the Great Lakes region; this strain is most closely related to isolates from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, suggesting introduction from an eastern reservoir. Characterization of VHSV types has yielded information that is necessary for policy development and regulation to help prevent the spread of new virus types in to an area. Research is continuing to better understand the genetic basis of virulence among strains identified in Canadian waters. 3.4 In 2007-08, novel vaccine types continued to be explored by DFO. Three different approaches are being targeted and based on the indirect but more powerful stimulation of the immune system via the activation of antigen presenting cells (APC) through heat-shock proteins (HSP)-antigen complexes. Atlantic cod and the pathogen nodavirus is the model for several reasons. Cod farming is nearing the commercial stage in eastern Canada and is a promising substitute to an almost inexistent fishery. Nodavirus is a serious pathogen of concern for cod farming, with several outbreaks reported in juvenile fish in the past 4 years. The immune system of Atlantic cod seem to possess unique characteristics, although cods can be immunized, a specific immunoglobulin response cannot be detected, so it is believed that cellular and non-specific immune responses are likely to be more important for this species. HSP-peptide vaccines are considered excellent candidates since discovering that HSP-peptide complexes are potent stimulators of a variety of immune responses, but to our knowledge, assays for fish vaccines have not been performed yet. |
4. Positioning the Canadian regulatory system for health to enable innovation while minimizing the risks to Canadians through a focused genomics R&D program aimed at strengthening capacity in priority areas such as genetic information, biotechnology products, human genomics and microbial genomics, on human, animal and environmental health. |
4.1 In 2007-08, genomics research within the Health Portfolio (HC and PHAC) continued to focus on the development and application of "omics" tools to reduce exposure to foodborne pathogens. Current research is providing insight into the cellular changes associated with dietary exposure to different classes of naturally occurring carcinogens that contaminate foods. The results of this research will further our understanding of events involved in tumour induction and will provide a mechanistic framework for regulatory decision-making. 4.2 Health Portfolio projects continued to build on existing research initiative focusing on the Evaluation of Environmental Toxicogenomics. Toxicogenomics is the application of genetic methods to the study of toxicology. The results from a project in 2007-08 have provided insights specific to gene expression changes, driven by exposure to toxic substances. These gene expression changes are critical pieces of knowledge to acquire and apply to gene expression profiling studies, for eventual application to regulatory decision making. Another research project was successful in characterizing cardio-pulmonary responses to cigarette smoke in the laboratory, which resulted in the identification of potential candidate biomarkers to predict the health outcome of cigarette smoking. 4.3 In 2007-08 research continued in the generation of pharmacogenomic and biotherapeutics data, specifically facilitating new knowledge of the potential health risks related to the toxicogenomics and proteomics of biotherapeutics. Health Canada increasingly recognizes the significant role that such data will play in future drug submissions and that this data holds the possibility to influence human drug approvals in Canada. Results revealed differential patterns of host responses following various regimes of biotherapies, which could help future exploratory studies aimed at identification of specific biomarkers suggestive of adverse reactions associated with biotherapeutics. This increased understanding helps position HC to meet the regulatory challenges of analyzing such data in order to issue sound, science-based decisions. 4.4 Federal scientists, together with local, national and international collaborators, continued their focus on genomics, including a wide range of public health genomics research. Research completed in 2007-08 at the Public Health Agency of Canada led to the development of a large-scale RNA interference library targeting most of the human genome for its ability to identify host cellular genes that have a role in supporting virus and transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (prion) pathogenesis. Prion diseases of humans include classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Further funding from national and international partners and commercial partners was secured to continue towards the development of a commercially available pre-clinical test. These results are likely to prove effective in the rapid detection, surveillance and risk assessment of prion contamination and other subtypes of organisms with the greatest public health risk. |
5. Increased knowledge for forest generation and protection methods and for addressing environmental impact considerations, through a focused genomics R&D effort on species and traits that are of economic importance to Canada. |
5.1 A genome scan by NRCan scientists in 2007-08, revealed that gene islands underlying growth and adaptation in spruce allowed the rapid selection of candidate gene to support linkage and association mapping experiments. Budset related genes were the target of newly synthesized libraries and ongoing expression profiling experiments. The NRCan Canadian Forest Service (CFS) developed a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism discovery Laboratory Information Management System and Database to track family members, expression data, PCR primers, amplification success and re-sequencing efforts. A white spruce consensus genetic map was assembled and major quantitative trait loci were identified for the control of bud set and annual height increment. In collaboration with Arborea II, a large-scale forest genomics project funded by Genome Canada (led from U. Laval); several hundred candidate genes have been identified for wood formation in white spruce. In collaboration with Treenomix, the other large-scale forest genomics project funded by Genome Canada (led from UBC); the CFS was able to localize the expression and induction profile of defence related genes, leading to improved understanding of insect resistance mechanisms in spruce and poplar. Recent progress in 2007-08 also demonstrated that a previously identified candidate gene in white pine is an important factor for plant defence response against pathogen invasion as well as for plant development. The CFS identified Douglas-fir disease resistance genes. 5.2 In 2007-08, the CFS made significant advances in the development of DNA diagnostic and monitoring tools for the early identification and tracking of pathogens. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and the United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection service (USDA-APHIS) have adopted operationally the DNA-based diagnostic assays developed for sudden oak death by the CFS for their survey, certification and quarantine applications. The CFS is currently generating large databases to identify genes that are involved in important disease processes (pathogenicity, infection, toxin production, host defence compound detoxification and host recognition) for use in diagnostic tools. 5.3 The interaction between viruses and the natural host is a culmination of co-evolutionary events that lead to successful viral infection and the survival of the host. CFS work in this area in 2007-08 has demonstrated the dynamic relationship existing in any given populations of insect viruses and their host. Microarray studies have shown precise gene expression profiles following infection. The CFS also found through these studies that certain viruses produce proteins that have a down regulating effect on host genes involved in the immunity of larvae to parasites. This is a promising avenue to generate effective biological control agents against Lepidoptera and pest beetles such as the mountain pine beetle. The CFS fully sequenced and annotated the genome of the whitemarked tussock moth nucleopolyhedrovirus. The sequencing of viral genomes has resulted in a proposal for a new classification of the family Baculoviridae and CFS work was a significant contribution to the state of the art understanding of the evolution of baculoviruses and their adaptation to their insect hosts. The CFS developed molecular tools for the detection of microsporidia, a group of unicellular insect pathogens, in outbreak populations of forest defoliators. These tools were used to track the prevalence of microsporidia during an outbreak cycle of the jack pine budworm and eastern spruce budworm to elucidate their role in outbreak dynamics and study their transmission in insect populations. |
6. Development of genome-science applications to support regulatory and enforcement activities in key areas such as environmental risk assessment and management; enforcement and compliance; pollution detection, monitoring and prevention; conservation biology and wildlife genetics; technology forecasting and assessment; and the responsible and sustainable development and use of bio-based products and industrial processes. |
6.1 Environmental genomics-based approaches were used in 2007-08 by EC to:
6.2 In 2007-08 investments continued in environmental genomics foresight, knowledge development, instrumentation, infrastructure and outreach (e.g., periodic comparative analysis of international environmental genomics activities via bilateral with US EPA). EC is also working closely with The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) of the World Health Organization (WHO) in developing strategies and work-plans on several fronts to lead and co-ordinate international efforts to attempt to see how toxicogenomic methods and approaches might be applied within in a regulatory context. Strengthening of partnerships and joint-projects between Federal Departments continues (i.e. Environment Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada). |
1. Name of Internal Audit |
2. Audit Type |
3. Status |
4. Completion Date |
5. Electronic Link to Report |
---|---|---|---|---|
Management of Information Technology (IT) Security |
Management Control Framework |
Completed and Approved by NRC President upon recommendation of the Departmental Audit Committee |
June 2007 |
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/aboutUs/audit/audit_verification_it_ti_e.html |
NRC-Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) |
Management Control Framework – Transfer Payment |
Completed and Approved by NRC President upon recommendation of Audit Committee |
September 2007 |
|
Limited Assurance Annual Compliance Audit 2007-08 Hospitality and Travel |
Compliance |
Completed and Approved by NRC President upon recommendation of the Departmental Audit Committee |
October 2007 |
Publication pending |
Limited Assurance Annual Compliance Audit 2007-08 Contracts Less Than $25,000 and Acquisition Cards |
Compliance |
Completed and Approved by NRC President upon recommendation of the Departmental Audit Committee |
October 2007 |
Publication pending |
Limited Assurance Annual Compliance Audit 2007-08 Hospitality and Travel |
Compliance |
Ongoing |
October 2008 |
N/A |
Limited Assurance Annual Compliance Audit 2006-07 Contracts Less Than $25,000 and Acquisition Cards |
Compliance |
Ongoing |
October 2008 |
N/A |
Follow-up Audit to 2002 Construction Contracts Audit |
Management Control Framework and Follow-up |
Ongoing |
October 2008 |
N/A |
Values and Ethics Audit Survey |
Audit Survey / Review |
Planning |
March 2009 |
N/A |
Facilities Management and Related Equipment Audit |
Management Control Framework |
Planning |
March 2009 |
N/A |
Internal Evaluations – Update on Recommendations from Previous Evaluations
Recommendation |
Management Response |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
---|---|---|
In its current strategic planning exercise, NRC-ICPET should attempt to develop a clearer vision for the Institute’s research program, one that has a narrower and more manageable focus than the current program. |
Through its strategic planning, the Institute will create a clear vision in conjunction with goals and strategies tied to a performance framework. |
This issue has been addressed through the preparation of a business plan that clarifies alignment between NRC-ICPET programs and NRC’s strategic elements and establishes a performance management framework (PMF). The plan will be adjusted on an annual basis and environmental factors will be taken into account. |
NRC-ICPET should seek ways to increase the degree of integration of the research activities within the Institute. |
Integration will be accomplished in part as research activities are developed around selected research themes identified in the strategic plan. |
Projects are developed within the strategies of five Programs, which form the framework of the PMF. Projects will be reduced to 11 in 2008-09 and 9 in 2009-10. |
NRC-ICPET should seek ways to increase interactions and build stronger ties with industry. |
Industry awareness of NRC-ICPET will be increased through several mechanisms. |
In building its Bioproducts Program, staff participated in workshops and roadmapping activities involving industry. It is expected that institute active participation in the program will include collaborative efforts with industrial partners. Institute will lead an effort of developing NRC’s Chemical Sector Strategy and will actively participate in implementation of the Automotive key sector strategy. Both initiatives will increase institute exposure to industrial partnerships. New BDO position has been established to enhance our industrial outreach. |
NRC-ICPET should increase its interactions and collaborations with universities. |
NRC-ICPET will continue to increase its linkages with universities, as identified in last year’s Planning Outlook. |
ICPET continues to build strong interactions with the university community. The Institute continued to participate in NSERC strategic networks related to fuel cells and signed a related Fuel Cell Research Centre MOU involving Queens University and RMC. Collaborations are also in place with McGill, University of Ottawa and Laval University. Institute’s researchers were successful in recent NRC-NSERC-BDC nanotechnology competitions being part of two of the five winning proposals (as a lead in one of them). These projects are multi-institute, multi-university endeavours expanding our collaborative exposure to academia. Institute is part of the SOFC (solid oxide fuel cells) NSERC strategic network and part of the applications of two others: hydrogen and PEM fuel cells. Institute’s number of adjunct professorships has increased from 2 in 2003 to 7 currently. |
NRC-ICPET should place emphasis on ensuring that it maintains an appropriately balanced research portfolio between long-term strategic research, near-term collaborative research and applied research |
The Institute’s intent in its planning to focus on specific themes, with applications arising from the themes, will provide a mechanism for effectively managing the research portfolio. |
The Project review and selection process is ongoing within the context of ICPET’s Business Plan. An internal Resource Committee composed primarily of the institute’s Competency leaders guides investments in staff and facilities. |
NRC-ICPET should seek ways to increase its visibility and raise its profile, both outside of and within NRC. |
As described in the response to Recommendation 1(a), improving the Institute’s focus will facilitate its efforts to increase its profile and recognition. |
The Institute provides leadership in OGD programs (PERD, ecoETI), industry consortia (CONRAD, OCETA) and NRC programs (bioproducts, fuel cells, chemicals and automotive key industrial sector). |
In considering appropriate mechanisms for transferring and commercializing its technology, the Institute should try to achieve a better balance between traditional licensing and the formation of spin-off or spin-in enterprises. |
In the strategic planning done thus far, NRC-ICPET has identified "building commercialization capacity" as a potential strategic theme to be pursued. |
No change from 2006-07 report |
The Sustainable Technology Office (STO) should concentrate in the future on developing its capabilities in sustainability analysis. In addition, a review of the STO’s wider functions should be undertaken. |
Sustainable technologies and systems are expected to be central to the Institute’s future and the development of tools to assess sustainability aspects of technologies will be factored into NRC-ICPET's strategic planning process. A wider STO role, such as facilitation, support and promotion of sustainable technologies beyond NRC-ICPET will require a clear NRC mandate and resource framework. |
No change from 2006-07 report |
Recommendation - The Peer Review Committee: |
Progress Made in 2005-06 |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
---|---|---|
Taking note of the important role of joint appointments of scientists by TRIUMF and universities, encourages the management to further involve Canadian universities with its strategy and activities |
TRIUMF continues to maintain its strong involvement with Canadian universities. During the fiscal year 2005-06, TRIUMF entered into a joint appointment with the University of Guelph and admitted St Mary’s University as an Associate Member of the TRIUMF Joint Venture. |
During the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008, the University of Manitoba’s application for membership was accepted. Additional enquiries concerning membership were received from McGill University, Laval University and York University. There is serious interest in joining TRIUMF in the university community and TRIUMF is defining the requirements and processes to join the Joint Venture. |
Endorses the clear strategic priorities put forward in the Plan, which aim at:
|
The proven success of TRIUMF’s ISAC facilities and its experimental program has clearly identified TRIUMF as a world-leader in radioactive ion beam (RIB) physics. With the recent inaugural operation of the ISAC-II super-conducting linac, TRIUMF is without question a unique facility in the world for this science and will remain a unique facility for the foreseeable future. TRIUMF currently has more internationally peer-reviewed requests for experimental beam time at the ISAC facility then it can possibly fulfill. In 2005, TRIUMF received a minimum of 19 requests (TRIUMF can only accommodate 8-10 experiments per year). TRIUMF has actively pursued funding for the ATLAS Tier-1 Data Centre, the next step in providing infrastructure for Canadian scientists wishing to participate in the ATLAS physics at CERN. As TRIUMF’s current Five-Year Plan did not provide this funding, TRIUMF is looking outside the NRC Contribution for funding to build this unique computer/data transfer facility. On behalf of TRIUMF, Simon Fraser University has made an application to the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for partial funding of the Data Hub under the Exceptional Opportunities Fund. In March 2006, CFI made a final decision to award $8.178 million for the Data Hub. TRIUMF has approached the Province of British Columbia for the remaining funds. |
TRIUMF is currently the unique facility in the world for radioactive ion beam (RIB) science but continues to be severely handicapped by having only one beamline to the ISAC facilities. This single beamline must serve the experimental community and the beam development group. TRIUMF will be hard pressed to maintain its premier position in the future as the new and extremely well funded RIB facilities in Europe and Japan come on line. The Task Force pursuing exotic beams from actinide targets has made good progress. TRIUMF is successfully continuing the development of new beams with a resonant laser ion source and FEBIAD ion source. Beams developed in the current fiscal year included but were not limited to Silver 112 and Beryllium 11. Installation of the Charge State Booster is complete and TRIUMF has installed the Super Nanogam Ion Source. Although initially proposed for funding as part of the 2005-10 NRC Contribution Agreement, TRIUMF was encouraged to seek support for the ATLAS Tier-1 Data Centre from CFI. The Canadian university community, led by Simon Fraser University and TRIUMF, were successful in obtaining CFI funding for the Centre along with matching funds from the Province of British Columbia. The Tier-1 Centre is now operational; recent performance comparisons of this Canadian centre to the 10 other analogues around the world showed the TRIUMF centre to be one of the best. CFI funding for this centre continues to 2010 when new funding must be found to maintain and operate the facility so the Canadian physics community can take advantage of Canada’s investment in the LHC at CERN. |
Supports the procedure that the management intends to put forward so that it receives regular advice on the scientific and technical developments of the laboratory from ACOT, from the Board of Management and from a new body derived from the Working Group which prepared the Five-Year Plan |
In 2005-06, TRIUMF management met two times in with the Advisory Committee on TRIUMF (ACOT), twice with the Agency Committee on TRIUMF (ACT) and five times with the Experiment Evaluation Committees (EECs). These three committees all have strong international membership. Meetings with user groups and with the TRIUMF Board of Management three times a year ensure that the TRIUMF Director receives the best advice and scientific input into the developments at the laboratory. Three committees were established to facilitate planning and coordination of ISAC activities: the ISAC Science Forum, the ISAC Beam Strategy Group and the ISAC Operations Review Panel. |
There was a special EEC late in the fiscal year to evaluate TRIUMF’s scientific plans for the 2010 5-Year Plan. TRIUMF is developing ambitious and visionary plans for the future, beginning in 2010, for both the laboratory and for Canada. The TRIUMF Board of Management is now meeting four times a year to provide increased input and advice to the Director and senior staff on achieving TRIUMF’s goals. During the year, the Operating Committee (OPCOM) was disbanded at the direction of the Board in favour of a new Policy and Planning Advisory Committee (PPAC). PPAC advises the Director on scientific policy and facilitates two-way communications with the research communities at the member universities. TRIUMF maintains several committees that facilitate planning and coordination of the laboratory activities such as the ISAC Science Forum and Beam Strategies Group. The Quality Assurance Committee (QA) is working to ensure TRIUMF’s QA policies and procedures meet or exceed the requirements of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. In addition, the Director created a Senior Management committee that meets weekly to discuss the activities of the laboratory. This committee consists of the Director, Division Heads and senior staff from each of the operating and administrative divisions. |
Notes that user liaison and communications could be improved and recommends that the laboratory address this appropriately |
A bi-annual newsletter is distributed worldwide to all potential users since October 2002. An ISAC Scientific Forum composed of experimenters, spokespersons of approved experiments and some ISAC operation personnel meets every second week to review progress and keep the user community in tune with laboratory developments. Minutes of this meeting are available on a public website and distributed to 86 experimental spokespersons. An ISAC Experimental Facilities Forum, which involves the facilities coordinators, some local experimenters and technical support personnel, meets on alternate weeks to discuss plans with the users. An ISAC Science Seminar program was initiated in June 2003. Since 2003-04, TRIUMF has had an ISAC Beam Development Strategy Group that includes representation from the Users Group. |
During the fiscal year 2007-08, TRIUMF began the process of systematically addressing its Outreach and Communications needs, both internally and externally. A Communications and Outreach Coordinator was hired to provide strategic guidance to these efforts and to augment the existing Outreach and Communications program staff. A strategy for optimizing the impact of TRIUMF’s periodic summary publications has been developed and is being implemented. Several major projects were undertaken during the year to communicate TRIUMF’s accomplishments more broadly and to attract students to careers in science and technology. The TRIUMF Outreach and Communications Committee meet twice per month to coordinate efforts across all divisions; it includes liaison members from the TRIUMF Users Group. The Outreach program, which focuses on schools, students and the public, organized public tours for more than 1,000 visitors this year. With support from NSERC and the Vancouver Foundation, a combined live-action and computer-animation educational movie teaching high-school physics using the TRIUMF cyclotron was created. The DVD was publicly released in April 2008, is being distributed to every high school in Canada and will be a main feature at a meeting of physics teachers from all across North America later this year. Targeted communications efforts have led to an approximate doubling of the media coverage of TRIUMF this year. Successful interviews with several major news agencies have resulted in establishing the laboratory as a source for timely and relevant technical commentary. |
Recommendation |
Management Response |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
---|---|---|
The Institute work at reducing fragmentation within NRC-SIMS by developing a process where multi- or inter-disciplinary research projects are identified and stronger teams of researchers with a common focus work on important long-range scientific problems |
Agreed. NRC-SIMS is fully committed to develop a process that will better enable the identification of multi/interdisciplinary projects around which stronger teams of researchers can be built and resources can be focused to achieve important long-range scientific and technological impacts. This is central to our current planning process that will be completed by June 2005. |
SIMS’s 3-year business plan clearly identifies priority areas for multi-disciplinary research. SIMS is currently involved in a number of these projects including leading a GHI-4 Biochip project, a CRTI project on ballistic protection, NRC-nano project on nanoaerosols and an NRC-NSERC-BDC project on photovoltaics. SIMS also is participating in a multi-institute NRC-NSC Taiwan project on biosensors and an NRC-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (Spain) project on nanocomposites. |
The Institute set up appropriate project structures and organizations so that multi- or inter-disciplinary research projects can take place. |
Agreed. NRC-SIMS recognizes that implementation of interdisciplinary; cross-Institute projects will require the introduction of new organizational structures. The management team of the Institute was restructured as a first step and various models that allow world-class competencies to be maintained while supporting a culture of large-scale interdisciplinary research projects are being explored. It is important that these new processes allow projects to be initiated and terminated based on clear, well-understood criteria. |
Under the new SIMS business plan, research has been focused on four program areas supporting the NRC strategic plan. The programs will build multi-disciplinary teams and collaborations to achieve long-term goals. The past year saw the termination of research activities in high-resolution spectroscopy, dielectric modification and diversity oriented synthesis. |
NRC-SIMS work to better coordinate its technology transfer activities with the aim of being able to articulate how its inventions and creations are impacting existing or future commercial technologies |
Agreed. NRC-SIMS recognizes that a shift of Institute culture is needed towards one in which researchers recognize and articulate both the scientific importance and the potential (or actual) impact of their work. NRC-SIMS will choose problems of national importance and establish the appropriate balance of fundamental science that must be understood and applied science that delivers a more easily measured impact. NRC-SIMS must build a communicative environment, in which research findings can be discussed, widely understood and possibly transferred to other hands for exploitation in innovative ways. In addition, the NRC-SIMS business office will develop a strategic business plan in 2004-05 that will incorporate best practices in IP management, strategic use of the Sussex Industry Partnership Facility and more effectively engage NRC-IRAP. |
This process continued in 2007-08. A more critical review of patent disclosures is now implemented with assistance from the CBS. |
The Institute consider developing a process for funding allocations that is more strategic with some appropriately determined level of internal funding set aside for competitive projects within NRC-SIMS with an emphasis on external matching funds. |
Agreed. NRC-SIMS is committed to meet the challenge of acquiring more external funding and introducing a competitive element for internal resource allocation, while ensuring that funds are channelled strategically. Institute level staff will be proactive in identifying and communicating external funding opportunities and deadlines to staff and providing administrative/logistical support so the researchers are not unnecessarily burdened with the logistics of grant writing. There is a need for management to accommodate the time-scales of maintaining Institute core competencies at the cutting edge, responding to technology opportunities in partnership with emerging industries, or undertaking discovery-oriented programs whose impact horizon may be ill defined at the outset. To accomplish this, NRC-SIMS management intends to introduce a strong element of project based resource and performance management in FY2005-06. |
A 15% reallocation is implemented annually. Projects on High-resolution spectroscopy and diversity-oriented synthesis were terminated. |
The Institute develop procedures for internal scientific control, which combine strong elements of internal and external competition. |
Agreed. With the shift towards project-based management, NRC-SIMS will introduce a range of project control, evaluation and reporting elements. Projects will need to be described and justified in competition for resources. Evaluation of progress will be made to justify continuation of resources and projects will be managed against deliverables within fixed time frames. The project management process is viewed as a framework to enable the other recommendations of the Peer Review committee to be addressed, namely: (1) identification of multidisciplinary projects and building of cross-Institute/NRC teams (2) communication of project goals, progress and achievements among staff, laying the groundwork for knowledge transfer and further impacts (3) building a culture of teamwork in securing funding from various sources, both from Institute-level internal allocations and with external partners. NRC-SIMS management recognizes that leading interdisciplinary research can only be carried out by teams that are able to maintain depth in their disciplines. An appropriate balance between discipline-based projects and interdisciplinary projects must be maintained. Excellence will be evaluated by periodic external peer review of groups and projects. NRC-SIMS management will work to convince researchers that well managed research projects are not inconsistent with excellent fundamental research. |
One of the criteria for project selection is the ability to leverage external and internal resources. This year saw a major increase in external funding leveraged from the institutes a-base. See for instance the activities in cross-council initiatives, CRTI and NRC-NSERC-BDC. |
Recommendation |
Management Response |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
---|---|---|
NRC should seek renewed funding for the Technology Clusters Initiatives in Atlantic Canada. The Initiatives in Life Sciences, e-Business/Information Technology and Ocean Technologies should continue to evolve to effectively meet the changing needs of the targeted communities. Based on the ongoing reassessment of the Wireless Systems Initiative, the Institute for Information Technology should continue to adjust both the positioning and value formula (technology focus, resources, etc.) to find the most effective design for NRC's involvement. Representatives from government, associations, academia and other organizations in the communities are active participants in the nascent clusters and are supportive of the cluster concept. Currently, cluster activities are perceived to be dominated by associations and government. The level of involvement by firms in cluster activities varies. Evidence shows that the low level of engagement of firms is a weakness that will need to be addressed as the cluster communities move forward. |
The request seeking funding renewal for the Life Sciences, e-Business/Information Technology and Ocean Technologies Initiatives is being developed. In moving forward with the Cape Breton initiative, the NRC Institute for Information Technology will reassess the Wireless Systems Initiative and continue to adjust both the positioning and the value formula accordingly. |
Completed |
The renewed NRC Initiatives should specifically seek to broaden the participation of industry in cluster activities. Industry commitment, visible through active involvement, should drive future development of the clusters (e.g., goals, plans and supportive actions). |
Participation of industry in cluster activity is vital to cluster progress and it is a necessary progression to seek increased involvement of industry in the clusters. Industry participation will be sought through several mechanisms such as workshops, technology demonstrations, conferences on emerging technology opportunities, the creation of interest groups in specific areas and training initiatives on platform technologies. |
Life Sciences: NRC-IMB hired five research officers and complementary technical staff in response to a community needs survey and a gap analysis as described last FY. NRC-IMB has also seconded a research scientist from ONC to work on AI projects. NRC-IMB continues to work with other cluster stakeholders to foster linkages within the sector:
NRC-IMB’s Director General is a member of all three committees. NRC sponsored local events for the community – an IP seminar, Nutrigenomics Workshops and co-hosted BioPort Atlantic. NRC-IMB hosted a two-day Biotechnology and Beyond seminar/workshop. NRC-IMB provided financial support for the registration fees to local partners. NRC-IMB has worked with other cluster stakeholders (BioNova, InNOVAcorp) to improve the technology transfer and business development capabilities of cluster members. The introduction of the Synergy Fund with InNOVAcorp - a feasibility study fund for early-stage R&D projects – is an important partnership between NRC and InNOVAcorp and is rated highly by the community. Cluster companies have access to CTI via an MOU NRC-IMB has with CISTI. NRC’s AI investment in companies and BioNova’s networking activities has enabled linkages within and outside the cluster. This includes partnership in the execution of BioPort Atlantic. NRC-IMB is a member of the Atlantic-wide Incoming Partnering Mission initiative. Life sciences companies apply to receive funding to host international companies in the region – the intent to raise awareness of our life sciences portfolio and to initiate collaborations. NRC-IBD (Atlantic) works closely with the life sciences industry association, BioNova, to increase interactions between science and industry. NRC-IBD is a leader in the development of commercialization in medical devices and diagnostics within the cluster. NRC-IBD is helping to facilitate spin off companies (e.g., NeuroVox), industry partnerships (e.g., Elekta) and licence agreements (e.g., Varian). NRC-IBD (Atlantic) is involved in BioPort Atlantic. NRC-IRAP fully expended allocated cluster funding with 2 firms (total contribution of $0.15M. where the total project costs were $1.11M). NRC-IRAP was responsible for organizing the Brain Repair Centre Commercialization Committee. Membership included NRC participants, federal and provincial government representatives, academia, private sector, industry and professional associations. The Committee is focussed on transferring new knowledge and technologies emerging from the Center to the marketplace. E-Business and Information Technologies Creating and facilitating linkages, through research connections, at the political level and even through innovative use of the IPF, has been a hallmark of the NB cluster initiative. NRC-IIT has been at the centre of the “network of networks” that has functioned as champions driving the cluster in place of a formal knowledge industry association in NB. In 2007-08, the latest iteration of a knowledge industry network is the move towards using a social networking tool, MyNexia, a web-based platform focused on matching financial assistance and value added programs in support of the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Learning Technologies. NRC-IIT will provide its expertise in Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence and the Province will use the tool in their strategy, linking not just those organizations working in learning technologies, but also energy, health, bio – in essence, providing a virtual meeting place for the knowledge industry. In addition, NRC-IIT-e-Business leverages strengths within NRC for the benefit of the NB cluster.
Create and sustain linkages with cluster partners for planning, financing and learning:
NRC-IRAP fully expended allocated cluster funding to 3 firms (total contribution was $0.16M where the total cost of these 3 projects was $1.41M). The Program also contributed $0.092M to 2 projects with organizations with NRC Cluster funding. (Total costs for these 2 projects were $0.094M). NRC-IRAP had a significant role in organizing 4 conferences/workshops with over 400 participants mainly from the private sector, province of NB and other federal government departments. Ocean Technology: Industry participation in the Cluster grew steadily throughout the year. Companies in the Cluster now number more than 50, with an increase of 15% over the previous year. Those companies have spent about $17 million on R&D activities during the reporting period and generated some $259 million in total sales revenue. Industry participation was evident in the OceansAdvance Strategic Foresight exercise, held in the first half of 2007. Over 70% of cluster members took part. Participants concluded that the Cluster could grow even faster, achieving a billion dollars in annual revenues over the next 5-10 years. The exercise was considered a great success and marked a “sea change” in how the Cluster thinks about itself and how members relate to one another. Industry will participate in the programs of NRC’s Ocean Technology Enterprise Centre (OTEC). The program and facility operated at maximum capacity during the year, with a full complement of a dozen companies in the Co-Location and Young Entrepreneurs Programs. This is seen a vital measure of the Cluster’s health, with industry participation at the level of NRC’s capacity to deliver the service. Other events throughout the year have been well attended by industry members, including workshops, guest speaker events, networking opportunities and the AGM. Industry participation on the Board of Directors is at its maximum, with all non ex officio officers belonging to the private sector. Industry is also well represented on the OceanAdvance sub-committees. NRC-IRAP fully expended allocated cluster funding with 1 project with a firm for $0.055M (total project cost was $1.059M) and $0.0204M toward 3 projects with organizations where total cost of these projects was $0.25M. NRC-IRAP had a significant role in organizing 5 conference/workshops/events with over 130 participants from the private, academic and public sectors. Nutrisciences and Health: NRC-IRAP fully expended allocated cluster funding ($0.053M) with 2 firms where the total costs were $4M and 3 organizations ($0.20M) where total costs of these projects was $0.27M. NRC-IRAP played a significant role in organizing 1 workshop with over 100 participants. |
The links between IPFs and their host Institutes should be adjusted as needed to ensure that strategic objectives are met. As the IPFs mature, their contribution to the cluster should be monitored. |
It is crucial to have strong linkages and relationships between IPFs and host Institutes to ensure strategic objectives are optimally met. The IPF will play a key role as the clusters mature and commercialization activities increase. If the coordination function noted in Recommendation 7 below, is implemented, exchange of best practices on IPFs and cluster development will be part of coordination activities. |
Life Sciences: The NRC-IMB Industry Partnership Facility continues to play a role in attracting companies to the cluster (Halifax Biomedical, Nortek Scientific, Ocean Leader). Approximately 85% of the available space was allocated during 2007-08. IPF clients work with NRC-IMB scientists on research collaborations, fee for service testing, training on and access to, equipment and networking opportunities. Staff from IPF clients also make extensive use of the on-site CISTI library and the CTI capabilities. Two cluster companies to date have been awarded project funding via the Synergy! Fund. E-Business and Information Technologies:For the FY 2007-08, the number of inquiries for co-location continued to exceed available space in the NRC-IIT Fredericton IPF, which housed nine companies/organizations. NRC-IIT Fredericton IPF tenant companies have been very successful in raising risk capital in 2007; most notably Virtual Expert Clinics, Atlantic Hydrogen, Radian6, Green Imaging Technologies and Pinpoint Selling, which have raised a combined $15M in 2007. A research collaboration that started in 2006 with Toronto-based Pinpoint Selling has generated a successful relationship in 2007 for NRC-IIT who negotiated the resulting intellectual property into a Technology Licence Agreement as well as an Agreement for Research Services. Pinpoint Selling has taken NRC-IIT Fredericton IPF office space where its two most recent hires, two former NRC-IIT students, will work with a senior NRC-IIT researcher who will provide consulting and integration services to help the successful implementation of the technology into the company’s marketing service line. Notable recent awards and honours for IPF tenants include Rogers Innovation @ Work Awards, Success Story at Full Sail Summit 2007, nominated for the 2008 National Ernest C Manning Awards, finalist in the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, 2008 KIRA Award for Most Promising Start-up. Ocean Technology: Activities in the NRC IPF are closely linked to the objectives of the Institute. Incubating companies are selected based on their potential contribution to the Cluster, while OceansAdvance itself is located in the IPF. Facility companies benefit from the expertise and facilities available to help commercialize their technology ideas. Close working relationships have evolved with some tenants, who are commercializing spin-off opportunities from Institute research. This directly addresses the first objective of the IOT Business Plan, formulated in 2007-08: to develop and transfer ocean technology solutions of importance to Canada. The location of OceansAdvance in the IPF and all associated activities, workshops, etc., addresses another of the Institute’s strategies: to foster a dynamic Ocean Technology Cluster. |
The Initiatives should continue to monitor impacts with regard to AI and adjust programming as required. To facilitate monitoring of impacts, baseline studies should be undertaken. |
The Atlantic Initiatives Management Self-Assessment is a diagnostic tool that has been developed to assist institutes, NRC-IRAP and NRC-CISTI identify areas for improvement to support technology clusters in their communities. The Self-Assessment addresses Monitoring and Management. The outcome of the self-assessment process will be an action plan developed by institutes, NRC-IRAP and NRC-CISTI to address areas for improvement and respond to the evaluation recommendations. As the institutes engage in phase two of cluster development, institutes will ensure that baseline information about the cluster and the Institute is collected providing a basis for future comparison. Baseline information about the cluster should be collected by cluster members at the community level. |
Life Sciences: After a review and assessment based on original business plan commitments, it was determined that the most effective role for NRC-IMB was in terms of providing R&D and technology development support. Other initiatives in the community provide business support. This was a direct result of other initiatives in the sector. NRC-IMB continues to be a lead partner in these initiatives. NRC-IBD (Atlantic) monitors impacts closely. It has been a driving force in building biomedical imaging capacity. There has been in excess of $26 million of new investment levered into the region in 5 years. The investment comes in the form of two new basic science labs embedded in the region’s major hospitals (over 10 000 sq ft), three state-of-the-art MR systems and more than 30 highly qualified personnel. E-Business and Information Technologies: FY 2007-08 was a year of significant progress. NRC-IIT and the province of New Brunswick have formed a joint management committee to drive the IT Cluster and we lead the Cluster key sector steering committees (Learning, Health, Bioproducts) with membership by key Cluster Stakeholders responsible for strategy implementation. Recently NRC-IIT partnered with the Province for an asset mapping exercise to which we have committed in 2007-08 and will contribute $160K in 2008-09. Ocean Technology: Industry Canada NL OT Cluster Baseline studies completed in 2001 and 2006. See table following this one of NRC-IOT Cluster engagement in 2007) |
An NRC Action Plan for each Initiative should be developed to provide a framework for NRC activities. These action plans would describe objectives, activities, timelines and performance measures for the scope of NRC's involvement in the development of the clusters. The action plans should be developed by the institutes, NRC-IRAP and NRC-CISTI as well as any other parts of NRC that would be involved or implicated. |
The Self Assessment addresses Strategy, Planning and Governance (business/action planning). The NRC Action Plans will be developed when new funding is secured and allocated to the Atlantic Initiatives and presented to SEC. The NRC Action Plan will specify objectives, activities, time lines and performance measures for the scope of NRC’s involvement in the development of the cluster. |
NRC-IMB is meeting all the timelines outlined within its business plan with some modifications:
NRC-IMB continues to monitor via an activity-based budget process. NRC-IBD presented an action plan been at the time of cluster renewal (2005), which included continued, ambitious, development of the imaging capacity, such as the Biomedical MRI Research Lab at the IWK Health Centre (recently opened) and the establishment of a magnetoencephalography (MEG) laboratory (underway). It also included continued development of commercialization, including the creation of a business development office (established) and increased integration of NRC commercialization expertise into the region's hospitals (underway). Communications are handled in-house, but this is an area flagged for increased activities. E-Business and Information Technologies: Following on previous significant planning efforts, NRC-IIT completed its first-ever three-year Business Plan in 2007-08. Ocean Technology: NRC-IOT operates the OTEC and programs. The unique offering of OTEC is access to the range of highly skilled technical specialists who work at NRC-IOT, proximity to world-class experimental facilities and access to the NRC Cluster Partnership Facility (CPF). OTEC provides competitive intelligence through NRC-IRAP and NRC-CISTI. Through its membership in the Campus Incubation Consortium, OTEC offers business mentoring and financial advice to young companies. In relation to the university, the Institute also provides co-supervision and support to a dozen graduate students who are working on collaborative projects and it employs between 6 and 12 work-term students each semester. Joint projects with Memorial have resulted in the formation and success of two local companies: MadRock Marine Solutions and Virtual Marine Technology. Additionally, eight NRC-IOT researchers hold Adjunct Professorships in Memorial’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. NRC-IOT is a partner of Memorial University in three collaborative projects with a total value of $1.2M to develop and transfer ocean technologies into the commercial sector. In other cluster activities, NRC-IOT operates the NRC Cluster Partnership Facility (CPF) that opened in 2003. It has become a hub of activity for NRC-IOT’s industry partners and for the full range of cluster partners. The CPF is the home of OTEC and all the resident companies, graduate students and visiting scientists, with NRC-IOT researchers distributed among all of them. The CPF provides attractive meeting, networking and remote conferencing facilities and as a result is the preferred site for seminars, conferences and collaboration meetings. Located on the campus of the university and close to provincial government buildings, it is literally and figuratively a centre for cluster activity. As part of its contribution to the cluster, NRC-IOT provides a home for the NRC-CISTI Ocean Technology NIC and associated services, IRAP staff and services and OceansAdvance in the CPF. The annual cost of this space, which might otherwise be rented out, is estimated at $67K for NRC-CISTI $40.4K for NRC-IRAP and OceansAdvance. The resources for the operation of the CPF are provided through FESM. OceansAdvance has identified an opportunity for the cluster in customized ocean observatory systems. Training of marine operators for harsh environment scenarios has the potential to be a beacon activity for the cluster. In particular, technologies for simulation of ship operations in ice have been identified as a market opportunity. The third area, in which the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, like its neighbours Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, has expressed strong interest, is Ocean Renewable Energy. A better understanding of wave energy and the design of devices for harsh environments, is a required technology development. The current business plan addresses these three areas. The first two, Ocean Observation and Arctic Operations in ice have become two of the focus areas for NRC-IOT research. Ocean energy, where the challenges are in the determination of the performance of the device, is being addressed by projects in the Performance Evaluation program area. The NRC Connections Conference (September 2007) presented a convergence of opinion in the evaluation of progress in cluster development. Speakers agreed that the focus of evaluation should be on the healthy dynamics of the cluster. Participants also advised against setting targets for results that are not under the direct control of the strategy, but they endorsed the concept of tracking the impact of an organization’s activities. |
As a key player in the Atlantic cluster communities, NRC should facilitate the development of a strategy for each cluster by the cluster members at the community level. |
NRC institutes cannot on their own, develop a cluster plan. Institutes can, however, facilitate, encourage and advocate for the development of a strategy for each cluster. The development of a strategy for the cluster is a logical next step as institutes enter phase two of cluster development. |
Life Sciences: The NRC-IMB-AI mission has been focused more closely on translating NRC’s research and development into a strategic advantage for the cluster. The number of cluster company partnerships via collaborative arrangements and/or fee for service arrangements has been increased. Institute platforms and facilities are more accessible to the community. The NS Life Sciences Advisory Council is focussed on moving the next stage of the roadmapping exercise forward. Efforts were also focused on raising awareness of the CI by hosting various members of the community – including the Minster of Health for the Province of Nova Scotia and the Greater Halifax Partnership. NRC-IBD: The most prominent example is the recently announced Life Sciences Research Institute at Dalhousie University (LSRI). NRC is a founding partner in this initiative and a major factor in this success. The $15M in federal funding for centres of excellence was awarded to the neuroscience cluster as a direct result of the clusters success. E-Business and Information Technologies: Alignment: NRC-IIT is closely aligned with the NRC Priorities and the Government of Canada priorities. The provincial government introduced its Self Sufficiency Agenda that includes the IT Cluster as a priority, with a focus on Learning, Health and Bio products R&D and secondary areas of Energy and Transportation. The Provincial agenda aligns closely with NRC-IITs competencies, role and research focus. NRC drives the government component of the cluster agenda in partnership with the Province of NB. Asset-mapping: The NB CI is fostering the development of cluster support services and recognizing the potential of knowledge-based industries by regional/local leaders and supporting regional strengths and assets. An MOU has been signed with the Province of New Brunswick about an Asset Mapping exercise. The purpose of the asset mapping projects is to provide information about the strengths, resources and opportunities that exist within the identified sectors in New Brunswick. The first Annex has been executed to cover two asset-mapping projects in the areas of Advanced Learning Technologies and Health/Life Sciences. NRC-ASPM has issued an invited RFP and it is anticipated that the asset maps will be completed by early Fall 2008. NRC committed in 2007-08 to contribute $160K in 2008-09. One of the overall goals for this project is to provide a sound base of information to support the development of a new strategic plan or enable the realignment of existing efforts and/or policies with regard to the two sectors in New Brunswick. Additionally, the asset mapping projects will help to forge further connections between individuals, industry, organizations and institutions within the sectors and to provide a catalyst for investment and the formation of new collaborations. NRC-IIT coordinated the hosting of a strategic meeting at its Fredericton site with the Deputy Minister, National Defence and the Deputy Minister, Intergovernmental Affairs and the Privy Council. The purpose of the meeting was to demonstrate the breadth and depth in capacity and capability in New Brunswick for a Center of Excellence in Advanced Learning Technologies (CEALT), as well as the substantial level of participation, support and progress by the key stakeholders. Senior government and private sector officials, as well as the Premier of New Brunswick, attended the meeting. (14 March 2008) NRC-IIT was a key participant and exhibitor at the Symposium on Advanced Learning Technologies (SALT 2008) where DG provided opening address and staff were keynote and session speakers. Over the course of the 2-day event NRC-IIT DG had several meetings with Canadian and US military and law enforcement officials. These were focused on demonstrating NRC-IIT’s infrastructure and expertise, especially in support of the CEALT and included tours of the Fredericton facilities. In response to the needs of the cluster, NRC has leveraged existing expertise by the creation of a new research group in Learning and Collaborative technologies. NRC-IIT is working with industry to help them form a provincial IT Association that will be directly involved in the cluster strategy development and implementation through membership on the Cluster Steering committees Ocean Technology: NRC has been instrumental in facilitating a strategy for the Ocean Technology Cluster. NRC-IOT, NRC-IRAP and NRC-CISTI continued to support all cluster activities throughout the year, providing advice, meeting rooms, office space and funding. The Strategic Foresight exercise undertaken by OceansAdvance was a great success, due in part to NRC participation and support. The exercise focused on three growth areas, as identified by the cluster. These include ocean energy, vessel operations and ocean intelligence. NRC-IOT, in its strategic business plan of 07-08, addresses all three areas and will be devoting research resources to their development over the next several years. As the cluster moves forward with its strategy for business growth, so will IOT with its plan of research support for the Ocean Technology Cluster. |
NRC should establish a coordinating function for the Atlantic Initiatives. This function would be the focal point for coordinating the Initiatives beyond the level of individual Initiatives. The role of such a function could include, but not be limited to, co-ordination across the cluster initiatives as required; setting common approaches (for performance measurement and management, financial tracking and other procedures); identifying, documenting and sharing best practices; and developing and sharing common tools. |
This would be a logical next step in cluster development. NRC will look at the possibility of creating a coordinating function as part of the next phase of Technology Clusters Initiatives in Atlantic Canada. |
Completed in 2005-06 |
The NRC Action Plan for each cluster should detail the role and contribution of communications in supporting the cluster initiative. |
The Self Assessment addresses Communications and Stakeholder Relations. The NRC Action Plan for each cluster (Recommendation 5 above) will detail the role and contribution of communications in supporting the cluster initiative. |
Life Sciences: The Nova Scotia Life Sciences Industry Association and ongoing industry consultations, facilitates the active engagement of cluster stakeholders. NRC sponsored local events for the community – an IP seminar, Nutrigenomics Workshops, Biotechnology seminar and cohosted BioPort Atlantic. Tours of NRC-IMB were also conducted for invited officials from the provincial Department of Health, as well as guests from the GHP and Dalhousie University, to showcase both the research facilities and the Industry Partnership Facility. NRC-IBD: As above, communications activities at NRC-IBD (Atlantic) are expected to increase. E-Business and Information Technologies: The NRC-IIT Business Plan does include a communications plan. Support for the communications objectives of the cluster is most often offered on a case-by-case basis, such as hosting and presenting at the final stage of judging for the Intelligent Communities 2007 competition (Fredericton finished in top 7; Seoul was the winner) and participating in the Think NB showcase, which had the greatest attendance of any cluster event to date. Ocean Technology: OceansAdvance manages communications; the public-private joint venture with a mission to make St. John’s an international location of choice for ocean technology. |
Accountability requirements for the AI funding should be reviewed and strengthened. Activities and results associated with the incremental AI funding should be tracked and reported separately. Consideration should be given to the appropriateness of targeting the AI funding to specific research projects that are incremental to the A-base funded research and targeted to the needs of the cluster community. |
When the funding levels of the renewed AI are in place and the plans for each initiative developed, an updated RMAF will be implemented and accountability will be tracked, reviewed and strengthened accordingly. The updated RMAF will be a cooperative effort of the AI Directors General and will be led by Corporate Services or a cluster coordinating function, if implemented. When the funding levels of the renewed AI are in place, institutes, NRC-IRAP and NRC-CISTI will track their AI funding separately so that cluster activity is accounted for and to demonstrate progress against the objectives outlined in the NRC Action Plan. |
Life Sciences: This is ongoing as described for last fiscal year. All principles and practices have been maintained. NRC-IBD: A business case was prepared for 2005 cluster renewal, which included milestones and deliverables specific to the cluster. Progress to date has surpassed all existing business case plans, with initiatives such as LSRI and the MEG lab represented additional growth. E-Business and Information Technologies: Per last year’s entry; plus Research Portfolio Management Guide completed and implemented. This is available to others as a best practice document on the NRC-IIT website at http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/r-d/guides_e.html Ocean Technology: No change from previous year NRC-IRAP continued to use Sigma and SONAR to track and report on its use of NRC cluster (AI) funding. |
Resource allocation should be based on a regular collective challenge process. |
NRC will continue to hold regular internal challenge meetings as it did this year. |
Life Sciences: Resources are allocated based on continually re-evaluated alignment with community needs, NRC priorities, NRC-IMB priorities and AI mandate, as outlined above. NRC-IBD: The AI cluster renewal was a formal systematic review in which all collective funding was evaluated. NRC-IIT reviews all research projects on an annual basis and CI resources in NB are allocated based on the 3 year approved Business Plan. Funding is allocated to the research priorities as outlined in the approved business plan |
AI funding should be tracked separately from A-base funding. |
AI funding will be tracked separately from A-base funding as described in response to Recommendation 9, above. |
Life Sciences: As above. Projects, resources will all be monitored and tracked separately from A-base and other B-base funding. NRC-IBD: AI funding is tracked in a separate cost centre. E-Business and Information Technologies: Same as last year. Ocean Technology: B-Base funding was allocated, along with A-Base and income, to salaries and ops as part of the overall institute financial plan. Staffing and project funding is not linked directly to B-Base funds, so estimates of impact of B-Base on HQP is reasoned below. Salaries from the AI B-Base funding in FY 2007-08 was allocated as $1.75M which equates to approximately 24 HQP FTE (@$74K/HQP). Therefore, it is reasonable to claim that B-Base funding secured 24 HQP within NRC-IOT’s staff, or that approximately 30% of all HQP staff are funded by B-Base dollars. AI funding is allocated into a separate fund centre and tracked through that fund centre. |
Recommendation |
Management Response |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
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NRC should continue to fund the Genomics and Health Initiative and seek renewal of the Genomics R&D Initiative for a fourth phase. |
Discussions to address the Phase IV program and competition design will be initiated with the GHI Directors General Committee and in consultation with the GHI Program Coordination Committee. Recommendations from the GHI Evaluation and lessons learned from GHI-3 will be incorporated into the Phase IV program design. |
The GHI Phase IV (GHI-4) competition was completed in November 2007. Five large-scale research projects were selected for funding from April 2008 to March 2011. Access to renewed funding (2008-11) for the Genomics R&D Initiative is being sought. |
NRC should ensure that, once strategic priorities are articulated through the Renewal Initiative, GHI's objectives clearly align with these. |
GHI's objectives will be reviewed after the NRC strategic priorities have been articulated through the Renewal Initiative. Revisions will be made to ensure that the objectives are clearly aligned with NRC strategic priorities. The VP (Life Sciences) will develop the revised objectives in consultation with the GHI Directors General Committee. |
Completed. GHI objectives have been reviewed and revised to ensure alignment with the new NRC Strategy (2006-11). GHI-4 objectives were approved by the VP Life Sciences in December 2006. The revised objectives are:
To foster excellence in horizontal research program management and accountability. |
A portfolio approach should be taken in future GHI phases, funding a balance of new basic research Programs and Programs that are more applied. For those Programs that propose "closer to market" applications, a market assessment study should be performed as part of the proposal process to examine the potential impacts of the work. |
In GHI Phase IV, a more formalized portfolio approach will be established as part of the program evaluation criteria for use by the GHI Expert Panel and as a guide for NRC Senior Executives when making program funding decisions. The portfolio approach will be based on funding a balance of programs with shorter-term commercial potential as well as those with longer-term research objectives. Lessons learned from the market analysis studies conducted by NRC institutes (e.g., BRI) and as part of the pilot study conducted by NRC Corporate Services, will be used to develop the specific requirements for market analysis studies that will be implemented into the GHI Phase IV evaluation criteria. The GHI Expert Panel will also be strengthened to include additional members with business and marketing expertise. |
Completed. NRC Senior Executives used a formal portfolio approach to select GHI-4 projects. The result is a balanced portfolio of programs with shorter-term commercial potential and longer-term research objectives. As part of GHI-4 research program evaluation, independent market / strategic positioning studies were successfully conducted for each of the submitted program proposals. The GHI Expert Panel was unanimous in its praise of the value added to the review and evaluation process by having the market studies available. |
Efforts should continue to build upon the progress made in GHI-2 in integrating activities across NRC. In addition, the complementarities between GHI Programs and other genomics and health research across Canada should be strengthened through increased collaboration with organizations external to NRC. |
Integration and leverage were important elements in the GHI-3 proposal evaluation criteria. Proponents were encouraged to assemble integrated, multi-disciplinary research programs that involved more than one NRC institute and to include research coordination and collaboration with other government departments and agencies, academia and/or industry. An inter-departmental Genomics R&D Coordinating Committee oversees the collective management and coordination of the federal Genomics R&D initiative and ensures that collaborations between federal departments are pursued wherever relevant and possible. The requirement for inter-institute collaboration in GHI Phase IV research programs will be strongly encouraged and collaboration with organizations external to NRC will continue to be an important criterion in proposal evaluation. |
Completed. Approved GHI-4 research programs were successful in ensuring continued integration across NRC research institutes (there are currently 10 institutes involved in the five GHI-4 programs). Additionally, efforts have been equally successful in integrating other government departments, universities and industry as collaborators into these research programs. More than 50 universities and private sector companies have been identified as collaborators in GHI-4 research programs. AAFC is a formal partner in one of the five research programs and IMRIS – a private company, is a formal commercial partner in another. |
A GHI specific Logic Model, which defines expected results in the near, medium and long term, should be established to facilitate more effective performance measurement. Objectives must be clearly stated and performance should be reported against the stated objectives at both the Initiative and individual Program level. Meaningful indicators that are linked to clear objectives or strategic plans need to be identified, agreed to (i.e., between management, researchers, VPs, etc.), tracked and accurately reported upon. The need to track performance and the allocation of resources should be balanced against the associated administrative burden. |
NRC is currently leading an evaluation of the interdepartmental Genomics R&D Initiative. As part of this evaluation, a revised RMAF will be prepared for the Genomics R&D Initiative. The consultant used to revise the RMAF will be used to develop a GHI specific Logic Model, which will define expected results in the near, medium and long term. Steps have already been taken in GHI-3 Program Charters to better define program objectives and key deliverables/milestones and research programs are required to submit quarterly reports that are focused on progress reporting against research objectives and milestones. In GHI Phase IV Program Charters there will be a focus on improving the definition of research objectives and how they link to the Initiative strategic plan and on better articulating and linking key program milestones. |
Completed. The RMAF developed for the Genomics R&D Initiative has been formally adopted by GHI and was used to guide the development of the Annual Integrated Performance Report (2006-07). GHI-4 program charters have been completed they provide more clearly defined research objectives and their linkages to NRC strategic priorities. Key program milestones have also been identified that will be used to track progress annually. |
Efforts should be made to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the business development function and communicate it to researchers and business development officers so there is a common understanding of what activities are part of the function. |
NRC is launching a comprehensive review of NRC business activities to ensure we have the right business activities and the right support for these activities in the future. Specifically, the Terms of Reference for this Review call for examining activities with a view to revamping support to achieve the goals under our Renewal Plan, to capitalize on opportunities under Portfolio management; and to work better 'horizontally'. This Review will ensure that GHI issues and opportunities uncovered during the evaluation are addressed appropriately. This would include clarifying business development and marketing roles and communicating them across the Program and the Council. |
Completed. NRC’s Business Review team recommended that business development expertise needed to be involved early on in the process of identifying and carrying out research activities. This included GHI projects where earlier involvement of Business Development Officers was highlighted as an opportunity for enhanced market outcomes and cross-NRC collaboration. The new Central Business Services (CBS) office is ensuring that NRC’s major research programs consider market factors from the very early stages of planning research and throughout the life of a research program. CBS provides a suite of tools and advice to assist institutes and programs to capitalize on market opportunities and to do this horizontally. |
In the context of the upcoming Genomics R&D Initiative evaluation, an in-depth review of the science directions and research thrusts of departments involved in Genomics R&D as well as other federal organizations including CIHR, Genome Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canadian Biotechnology Strategy should be undertaken to determine the extent to which the different programs are complementary or duplicative. In this regard, the status and/or results of the current review by the Minister of Industry of federal government's involvement and investments in genomics R&D need to be taken into consideration. |
The evaluation of the interdepartmental Genomics R&D Initiative will provide an in-depth review of the science directions and research thrusts of federal departments involved in Genomics R&D. A similar review (i.e., the Genomics Review) of other federal organizations including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Genome Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the broader Canadian Biotechnology Strategy has been initiated and is being led by Industry Canada. These evaluations/reviews will provide an excellent examination of how these different programs could be more effective. The GHI Coordination Office, in consultation with the GHI Directors General Committee, will take steps to address any specific issues or concerns that are raised in the recommendations and associated management responses of these evaluations/reviews. |
Completed. An evaluation of the Genomics R&D Initiative was conducted in 2006. The primary conclusion from this evaluation was that the Genomics R&D Initiative is relevant as a critical element of the broader Canadian activities in biotechnology and that it is complementary to other initiatives related to the regulatory activities associated with biotechnology and other federal genomics R&D investments (e.g., Genome Canada). Industry Canada has recently completed a review of a full range of federal government involvement and investments in genomics research, including Genome Canada, the granting councils (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada), Canada Foundation for Innovation, Canada Research Chairs, the Networks of Centres of Excellence and the intramural Genomics R&D Initiative. This review concluded that the roles of these federally-funded research organizations are complementary and integrated, as well as appropriate to provide the capacities and structures needed to support the mandate of departments and the different scales of research programs. Furthermore, while noting that there is room for improvement in the area of coordination and strategic planning, it concluded that federal investments have well positioned Canada given genome science developments, the increasing magnitude of collaborations and the continuing investments by foreign governments and institutions in genomics R&D. |
The GHI Coordination Office should continue to help support the Scientific Leaders in the area of project management (e.g., training, reference materials, information sessions, workshops) with special attention given to those with less experience. The Coordination Office should help to facilitate the sharing of good management practices between experienced Program Drivers/Scientific Leaders and new ones. |
One of the key roles of the GHI Program Coordination Committee is to share best management practices amongst Scientific Leaders. This approach will be strengthened in GHI Phase IV by the introduction of a project management workshop to be held during the launch of GHI-4. The GHI Coordination Office, in consultation with participating institutes and Corporate Services, will develop the workshop. The workshop objective will be to provide guidance on GHI and Institute program management requirements and performance management and will include presentations on best practice from experienced GHI scientific leaders. Consideration will also be given to including presentations from professional project managers in the private sector. With respect to specific project management training for Scientific Leaders, the GHI Coordination Office can provide financial support and facilitate specific training to support the delivery of horizontal research programs. However, the training and development of Scientific Leader staff is an institute responsibility and any efforts in this area would require coordination and approval from institute management. |
Completed. A Kick-off Workshop was organized and implemented as part of the roll-out of GHI-4 research programs. The Workshop provided guidance on the various aspects of GHI governance, as well as program / performance management requirements. Best practices from GHI-3 research programs were integrated into the presentations. The idea of a Kick-off Workshop has been incorporated into a standard element to take place at the beginning of each future phase of GHI. |
Implementation of the new governance and accountability structure put in place for GHI-3 should be monitored as to its effectiveness as Phase 3 progresses. |
The GHI Directors General (DG) Committee as well as the GHI Coordination Committee will monitor the effectiveness of the new GHI Governance and Accountability structure. This will be an annual agenda item for both committees recommendations made by the committees will be used to guide governance model revisions. The effectiveness of the structure and operation of the various committees will be a key issue for discussion. Any major changes to the governance and accountability framework would need to be agreed to by the GHI DG Committee and submitted to SEC for formal approval. |
A review of the GHI Governance Framework has been completed with the GHI Program Coordination Committee (e.g., Scientific Leaders and Project Managers) and a meeting has been planned to conduct a similar review with the GHI DGs Committee in the Spring of 2008. |
Proposals for future phases should be streamlined and should focus on the articulation of clear and realistic objectives and milestones. There should be more transparency in the final Program selection process, including better articulation and communication to the Scientific Leaders of the rationale used for final funding decisions. Consideration should be given to tracking the time taken to develop proposals for any future phases. |
Changes to streamline and focus proposals on the articulation of real objectives and milestones have been initiated in GHI-3 and this will be built upon in GHI Phase IV. Efforts to improve the transparency of the final program selection process were also introduced in GHI-3 and additional steps will be taken in GHI Phase IV. For example, a more formalized proposal evaluation system will be developed to provide specific feedback on each evaluation criterion. This information will then be used to create evaluation summary documents that will be communicated to each proposal proponent. The overall objective of this change will be to better articulate the rationale used in the decision making process. |
Completed. GHI-4 research program proposals were streamlined and there was a much-improved articulation of real objectives and milestones. These changes are also reflected in the approved GHI-4 program charters. Changes to improve the transparency of the final program selection process were implemented and a more formalized proposal evaluation system was used. Proponents were provided with much more detailed (and specific) feedback on each evaluation criterion in terms of the areas that were seen as strengths and weaknesses, together with commentary that provided the reasoning for any proposed changes. This approach has been adopted as standard practice and will be used in all future phases of GHI. |
The Programs’ Charters need to include specific plans on how the project will end in the event funding is discontinued after three years. |
Based on evidence presented in the evaluation, there is clearly a perception by some participants in GHI research programs that funding is likely to continue beyond the nominal three-years of program approval. In GHI-2 and GHI-3, competition guidelines indicated that programs were to be planned and funded for a limited duration (typically three years) and that associated research objectives and milestones were to be prepared on this basis. In GHI Phase IV, program duration and the process for funding renewal will be more explicitly presented in program documentation. Additionally, as part of the GHI Phase IV Program Charter development, a new requirement will be introduced that will require each program to prepare a closure strategy in the event that funding is discontinued. As part of the GHI-3 program closure strategy, proposals may be put forward to seek continuing funding for a short period to ensure the completion of critical work. Efforts will be undertaken for Phase IV funding decisions to be made six months in advance of GHI-3 completion so that adequate time is provided to implement closure strategy plans. |
Completed. GHI-4 Program Charters have been developed and because of program framework documentation and related presentations, it is now clearly understood that GHI-4 research programs will end in March 2011 and that a closure strategy is required in the event that funding is not renewed. The changes to the decision-making timeframe (i.e. mid-November) provided 4.5 months advance notice so that GHI-3 programs not continuing into Phase 4 had adequate time to implement closure strategy plans. This approach was viewed by participants as being very successful and will continue to be implemented into future phases. |
To make optimum use of external reviewers, an independent assessment of past performance by experts should be integrated into the Program selection process of any new GHI phases. Peer reviewers should be asked not only to review proposed work, but also provide an opinion on past performance at the same time. Specific questions relating to research completed in the previous phase (e.g., achievement of objectives, quality and relevance of the outputs/outcomes) should be included as part of the proposal review. |
GHI program proposals are required to include a Background Section that provides progress to date in areas directly related to the proposal and a list of outputs (e.g., publications, patents, licensing agreements, etc.) related to the research. For existing GHI programs, peer reviewers and members of the GHI Expert Panel have used this section to assess past performance. In the GHI Phase IV Competition, this section of the proposal template will be strengthened and the requirement to explicitly report on progress towards research objectives and milestones in areas directly related to the proposal will be made a requirement. Additionally, the GHI-3 performance reports will be made available to the reviewers of GHI-4 proposals. GHI-3 research programs are required to submit quarterly performance reports that are reviewed by program Steering Committees and by the GHI Directors General Committee. As well, it is planned for the GHI Expert Panel to conduct formal mid-term reviews of GHI research programs, with recommendations made to the Vice President Life Sciences, who will determine if funding for a program will be continued, reduced or reallocated. These existing performance evaluation mechanisms are considered comprehensive and the integration of additional, independent assessments of past performance as part of future GHI program selection processes are seen to be unnecessary. |
Completed. The GHI-4 full proposal template included a requirement to explicitly report on progress towards research objectives and milestones in areas directly related to the proposal. GHI-3 performance reports were also made available to the reviewers of GHI-4 proposals (external peer reviewers and the GHI Expert Panel). This has been adopted and will be used in future GHI proposal processes. A mid-term review of approved research programs by the Expert Panel has been established as part of the overall and ongoing performance management strategy within GHI. |
Before replicating the GHI model for other NRC horizontal initiatives, the following issues need to be taken into consideration:
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NRC Senior Executive agree to consider these issues before putting in place any future horizontal initiatives at NRC. |
The issues related to governance and funding for horizontal initiatives are currently being examined by NRC. |
Recommendation |
Management Response and Proposed Actions |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
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NRC-IFCI must articulate a value proposition to industry to ensure its research and development (R&D) complements industry rather than potentially placing itself in competition with industry. |
Accepted. NRC-IFCI will regularly review, with our partners, our research directions against short, medium and long term needs of the fuel cell cluster and make adjustments in order to ensure that we maximize our impact in meeting the needs of industry through the unique provision of technology breakthroughs and expertise and core-competencies. Our Cluster Business Plan is based on industry consultations, an independent survey of their needs and the Round Table and as such has captured key parts of their recommendations:
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During 2007-08, NRC-IFCI was engaged in the first consortium project with industry, delivering pre-competitive research to two companies who had never collaborated before. Other ways in which our R&D complemented industry:
NRC-IFCI agreed to be part of the BC Fuel Cell Strategic Plan rep committee with H2FCC and BC Government Department of Mining, Energy and Minerals NRC-IRAP fully expended allocated cluster funding, including 7 projects with hydrogen/fuel cells related Firms for $0.32M (total project costs for these projects was $5.13M) and 2 projects with organizations supporting the hydrogen/fuel cells sector for $0.073M (total project costs was $0.21M). |
NRC-IFCI should focus on ways to increase usage of the HTEC, including the implementation of targeted marketing efforts. |
Accepted.
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Undertook a marketing study to have the FC sector validate our understanding of their needs with the intent of increasing HEC usage. Industry wanted us to ‘prove their concept’ – independently certify their experimental results. They also identified the need for a vibration table and a smaller climate chamber. The report also indicated the need for a marketing coordinator who would prepare marketing materials, call on potential clients and contact stakeholders. Utilization doubled from previous year. New billing strategy making HEC affordable for smaller companies. |
NRC-IFCI must continue to focus on building internal research capabilities. |
Accepted. Building core competencies and research leadership skills is critical in ensuring the sustainability of the Institute and is therefore a top priority. In addition to training research leaders, we plan to increase the number of research positions through increased revenue generation.
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Conversion of PDFs into RAs: full orientation. Development of project selection process further with field of knowledge survey preceding project selection. Key consolidation and market/IP assessment made to internal, fundamental projects that feed knowledge to collaborative and application oriented projects. Strategic term positions turned into continuous. Used information & advice from technical subcommittee of Advisory Board to direct core competency growth. Development of testing capabilities through Advanced Testing and Verification project. |
NRC-IFCI must ensure its research plan is focused and is within its resources and clearly communicate it to stakeholders. |
Accepted.
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Number of internal projects reduced to eight and communicated to Advisory Board Technical Sub-Committee. Note that our core competency focus is working as our groups continue to receive more and more world recognition. |
NRC should consider all options, including work force adjustments, when making a significant shift in research focus. |
Accepted.
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Completed in 2006-07 |
NRC-IFCI must focus on managing resources and implementing plans and continue the development of management practices and processes to deliver against objectives. |
Accepted.
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Increased governance with introduction of Management Accountability Agreements Established position of business planner to plan and manage resources, monitor execution and report on results. Established position of strategic planner to provide management team with additional resources. |
NRC needs to clearly articulate what is meant by "flagship" institutes and what roles and responsibilities are related to this. |
The industry is requesting NRC to provide one portal, which coordinates and focuses resources within NRC. In our view NRC-IFCI can be the portal for fuel cell R&D because NRC-IFCI is an applied institute, located in the centre of the largest fuel cell cluster and has become the centre of activities for the fuel cell industry as a whole. It has the largest fuel cell research group in Canada and works closely with its university partners to focus on meeting the needs of the industry. NRC-IFCI has become the hub that coordinates the fuel cell R&D community in Canada and interfaces with industry. Hydrogen & Fuel Cells Canada, the national industry association, is headquartered at NRC-IFCI and regularly communicates industry-involving needs. NRC-IFCI have built strong relationships with industry and the universities and established strong links with international research organizations. In addition, NRC-IFCI, with its Industrial Partnership Facility (IPF)/testing/demo facilities, industry-led Advisory Board and strong links with the NRC-IRAP ITA community, is very much aware of market and industry needs. So, as the portal, NRC-IFCI, on one side, can communicate those needs to the NRC FC Horizontal Program. The Horizontal Program will use that information to establish criteria for project selection that enables development of critical and yet novel knowledge platforms to be used by the applied institutes to support industry partners. And/or on the other side, NRC-IFCI can address multiple needs/requests from industry by linking them and/or their projects/consortia to appropriate NRC wide skills and expertise. |
DG NRC-IFCI is leading development of National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Program. |
Recommendation |
Management Response and Proposed Actions |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
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Articulate NINT's strategic vision and the specific mechanisms by which it will be achieved. |
This recommendation will be implemented within the calendar year. NINT did have a plan for the first five years: to build, equip and populate NINT within a particular research framework articulated by Dan Wayner in 2002. Also, the strategic framework for operation was acknowledged by the Board in its first meeting in June 2005. However, in the past, approval of a formal strategic plan was hampered by a lack of understanding among the parties of what the strategic plan should include. It is the intent of management to develop a strategic plan that reflects the joint initiative and that can be approved by the NINT Board on October 3, 2006 as well as the funding partners of NINT. The strategic plan will provide clarity on the research plan and focus. |
NINT management and the NINT Board of Trustees are still working on the final version of the Strategic Plan to capture the unique collaborative opportunities within the partnership. Meanwhile, the Strategic Plan Draft document continues to provide the framework within which NINT is operated and from which the Business Plan is derived. NINT provided NRC with a Business Plan for the NRC Business Plan process. The Board continues to ask for a Business Plan that covers all of the NINT partnership activities, but this has been hampered by the uncertainty of other partner funding. |
Address outstanding human resource issues and maintain as a priority for management. |
The recommendation will be acted on immediately. The Director of Research position is a top priority with management and while the first search was not successful, creative alternatives are being pursued. The open recruitment process may be expanded within the framework of the federal government staffing process, which requires that an Internal Competition be followed by an External Competition. Other HR issues, such as long-term career paths, will be brought forward for discussion between the principals in the two organizations, but it should be recognized that there might not be solutions to all of the career issues. |
The Director of Research took on a position of DG at another institute leaving the position at NINT at the end of 2007. Recruiting for the Director Research position will proceed in the fall for appointment in the spring. The DG has engaged in discussions with the RO/RCO community at NINT to determine how their careers can best be managed within the unusual structure of NINT resulting from the secondments to and from the University of Alberta. This issue is particularly important and challenging for those who are not seconded. |
Clarify the role and responsibilities of the Board of Trustees. |
The role of the Board of Trustees is defined in the Governance Agreement for NINT. As the Board continues to meet regularly and NINT is fully established, the responsibilities of the Board will become more definite. To ensure that the Board’s role reflects the partners’ expectations, one-on-one interviews with partners and Board members will be initiated and results will be reported at the next Board meeting. |
The Board of Trustees at the May 14, 2008 meeting expressed satisfaction with the operation of the Executive Sub-Committee and asked for a standing report to the Board. The new Chair of the Board is expected to take a more active role in the governance and in the interactions with the Oversight Committee |
Refine administrative systems. |
This recommendation will be implemented to the extent possible. The NRC personnel at NINT and the University of Alberta personnel are continually working on finding the most effective ways of working together. A number of agreements have been signed, but more need to be implemented. Special communication efforts will be made to make the processes more open and clear for everyone. |
The University of Alberta has acknowledged the need to put into place a structure and process that allows for complete and accurate accounting for NINT related expenditures and funding that is managed by the University of Alberta. There are ongoing negotiations with the University relating to all agreements, both new and existing since some of the latter are expiring. |
Finalize the communication protocol and develop a communication plan. |
This recommendation is critical and attention will be given to getting the communications protocol agreed upon and signed. The major principles are in place and a protocol has been developed and agreed upon in principle. The communications strategy needs to be developed and is important as NINT moves from a responsive to a proactive phase. |
The partners have renegotiated the communications protocol with the joint agreement that future communications will focus on branding the NINT entity rather than the partners. The document is nearly finalized and will be completed in 2008-09. |
Secure sustainable levels of ongoing funding. |
This recommendation is being acted on immediately. The outcome of the evaluation process is feeding into the business plan for NRC renewal request to the Government of Canada. In parallel, the Government of Alberta is developing a Nanotechnology Strategy that recognizes the critical role of NINT for Alberta. |
NRC has secured funding for NINT through the 2009-10 fiscal year but will need to return to TB for funding thereafter. The Government of Alberta is implementing its Strategy and is seeing some funding move to NINT. Discussions are ongoing among the three partners concerning dedicated resources to NINT. This issue is at the top of the agenda for a meeting of the Oversight Committee scheduled for summer 2008. |
Recommendation |
Management Response and Proposed Actions |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
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CEHH should increase linkages to the medical and nutritional research community working in the field of functional foods and nutraceuticals (FFN). |
Accepted. NRC-PBI has currently begun establishing linkages with the medical and nutritional community at the University of Saskatchewan and NRC-INH in Prince Edward Island (PEI). |
NRC-PBI developed a formal collaboration with Dr. Wang of NRC-INH to explore the efficacy of the phytosterol produced in Brassica. NRC-PBI signed a Collaborative Research Agreement with Saponin Inc. to work on “Cyclopeptide Analogues as Human Therapeutic Agents”. This work includes researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and Saponin Inc. NRC-PBI and 22nd Century Inc. signed a Research Collaboration and Licence Agreement to investigate nicotine biosynthesis in tobacco, including control and elucidation of the pathway. Bioaccess has established a 47-company client base across Western Canada. NRC-IRAP fully expended allocated cluster funding ($4M with a total project costs of $0.68M) to BioAccess Commercialization Centre (BAC). Major achievements for the year included: 1) gaining competitive advantage for industry by recruiting business and technology analysts, by identifying experts and mentors across Western Canada, by providing internet access to information and services to almost 50 BioAccess clients and by designing a regulatory services/support program; 2) bringing local ideas to marketplace by completing a national environmental scan that identified key issues study and action, by initiating discussions with partners across Western Canada and by producing a bi-weekly News Bulletin for industry; and 3) building competitive foundations by completing and implementing a communication strategy, by launching service offerings in Saskatchewan and across Western Canadian SMEs; and by initiated a Technology Roadmap project known as BioFutures. |
CEHH should develop an operational/business plan clearly outlining commitments and timelines for any future activities should additional technology cluster initiative funding be received. |
Accepted. NRC-PBI will develop an operational plan in consultation with NRC-IRAP, NRC-CISTI and the BioInnovation Centre to support all facets of the cluster as outlined in its business plan. |
Due to the departure of a key employee, the plan will not be finalized until September 30, 2008. A PHW Committee has been established to review and select proposals for funding. An Operational Committee for NAPGEN was established |
CEHH should develop a communications plan to guide future outreach efforts with the FFN cluster players. The plan should include strategies to communicate with cluster actors in the research/academic community as well as other stakeholders and industry. |
Accepted. As part of its business planning, NRC-PBI has identified outreach and communications planning as critical to providing momentum in the community to develop the cluster. |
BioAccess completed a marketing campaign aimed at communicating to companies across the West what BioAccess is and how it can help firms through the commercialization process. BioAccess is in the process of completing a Technology Roadmap called “BioFutures” which focuses on what is next for this industry sector. 2007-08 Cluster Dimension Project titled “The Functional Food and Natural Health Products Industry in Western Canada” provide BioAccess with a report giving an overview of the Western Canadian FFNHP industry. Twenty-three companies were interviewed and 4 major areas were explored.
A second project provided an overview of the structure and strength of ties or links amongst firms and between network firms and select support organizations. |
NRC-IBD should establish an accountability framework between NRC-IBD and BCC to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the two organizations, particularly relating to tenancy arrangements of NRC-CCBT. |
In progress. Leasable space in NRC-CCBT is already 48% occupied, only nine months after building completion. For the remaining space, in accordance with the IBD-BCC Memorandum of Collaboration setting out each Party’s responsibilities, NRC-IBD will consult with BCC to determine space requirements in the next 12 months. For space not required by BCC, NRC-IBD will seek tenants and organizations that will not be in the BCC program, so as not to compete with BCC program objectives. |
As at 1 April 2008, leasable space in CCBT was 70% occupied. The total number of tenants in CCBT as at 1 April 2008 was twelve, with six tenants enrolled in the BCC program and all twelve tenants are related to the Biomedical Cluster. Through the Steering Committee meetings, BCC has advised NRC that there are plans for three additional clients for the BCC Program. NRC Biomedical Technologies: NRC-IRAP fully expended allocated cluster funding ($0.44.M where total project costs of $0.92M ) as planned to Bio-Commercialization Centre (formerly CCBT) to provide mentoring and other support to SMEs; contributed to Skills Survey (HQP development) and initiated discussions with the investment community to devise an investment readiness strategy. |
Given the significant amount of space within NRC-CCBT allocated to BCC, NRC-IBD should ensure that BCC has a current business plan in place outlining timelines, milestones and contingency plans for finding and securing appropriate clients for the allocated space and for participating in BCC programs. |
Completed. BCC has a current Business Plan and Work Plan, submitted to its Board of Directors in March 2006. BCC also reports progress to NRC-IRAP monthly. |
BCC has a current Business Plan in place and reports progress to NRC-IRAP monthly. |
As per the Memorandum of Collaboration between NRC-IBD and BCC, NRC-IBD should ensure formal meetings of the Joint Steering Committee take place and appropriate mechanisms are established to monitor progress against commitments outlined in the MOC and to meet federal government accountability requirements. |
Accepted. Planning meetings have been ongoing since 10/2005 and carried out on an ad hoc basis to date. Joint Steering Committee meetings will commence in Q4 2006. These meetings will utilize agendas and actions arising to monitor progress against commitments. |
In addition to the ad hoc meetings, there were formal Steering Committee meetings, which were held in May and November of 2007. |
Recommendation |
Management Response and Proposed Actions |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
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Fast-track the planned undertaking of needs analysis within local industry in the SLSJ region to determine opportunities related to the technology platforms that are being put in place in NRC-ATC. |
Accepted. The Canadian Aluminium Transformation Technology Roadmap, of which NRC is a key stakeholder, will bring forward national and local industry needs. Through a number of workshops, those firms are voicing their views on the sector priorities and their challenges to answer them. |
NRC has played a key role in 2007 by pursuing the effort to develop a “Conseil sectoriel de l’aluminium”, a coordination committee for the whole of the aluminium industry. This is in direct response to the first recommendation of the recent “Canadian Aluminium Transformation Technology Roadmap”. An executive committee, composed of NRC-ATC, the Aluminium Association of Canada, REGAL, Trans-AL and CQRDA, is presently developing the mandate and operating structure of such a coordination committee. NRC was instrumental in organizing 5 meetings with key stakeholders in order for them to discuss the possible organization of a secretariat for the Canadian Aluminium Industry lead by the industry (SMEs and multi-nationals). Work is still in progress in 2008 A wide distribution effort was performed following the official launch of the 2006 edition of the Canadian Aluminium Transformation Technology Roadmap. NRC has collaborated with its partners in the promotion and production of documents:
Events:
Trans-Al Network: NRC provides direct support to regional chapters of the Trans-AL Network (and coordinates regional chapters directly). It is also present at the annual meeting of this SME network and shares technical and business presentations. Between April and December 2007, ATC and Stakeholders members made 11 presentations on the Roadmap in Canada, while outside entities published 7 papers and 6 websites articles regarding the document. Namely, the Canadian Aluminium Transformation Technology Roadmap, led by NRC, was featured in international industry journals (Light metal Age, USA, Aluminium Times, UK) as it was the first of its kind Also, 500 copies of the document were distributed during Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association’s exhibition in Hamilton, Ontario, in May 2007. Between April and December 2007, the document was freely accessed on the internet more than 2600 times. NRC-IRAP fully expended allocated cluster funding to 13 projects with firms in the aluminium processing and manufacturing sector ($0.29M where total cost of projects was $5.47M) and 1 project with an organization ($3.5K where total project cost was $0.75M). NRC-IRAP dedicated one full time domain specific Quebec ITA to the cluster. An ITA in Ontario and BC worked closely with the cluster to link cluster activity to their local firms. |
An integrated approach with all stakeholders of the cluster in order to develop programs and services dedicated to the need of SMEs, in particular.
Using the same successful vehicle that has been used at IMI-Boucherville, multi-partners projects will be created to address common opportunities and issues of SMEs. |
CISTI hired a new analyst to implement in Saguenay a new service for Competitive Technical Intelligence in aluminium related fields for the cluster. NRC was involved in two major networking and showcase events for the CI:
NRC-IRAP has contributed financial and in-kind support to the organization of "TRANSAL Conference 2008,” an international aluminium conference to be held in Biarritz, Spain in June 2008. Support to innovation partners: NRC has coordinated with REGAL and UQAC to develop and support their application to CFI for further specialized aluminium related R&D equipment not presently available in the cluster. The application has been successful, with 16M$ granted to 4 universities (UQAC, Laval, Sherbrooke and ÉTS/Montréal), 5M$ of which is being installed locally at UQAC ‘S CURAL pavilion and will be accessible to NRC-ATC and the cluster. NRC-ATC was involved in multiple research projects with external and internal CI companies NRC-ATC has contributed to the training of several HQP (8 graduate students, 6 invited workers from Laval University, Alcan R&D and STAS. NRC-ATC has produced 39 reports and publications in 2007. NRC-ATC researchers teamed-up with Laval University and 4 industrial partners to launch a multi-year strategic research in aluminium hydroforming and succeed in securing a grant of $525,000 from NSERC. Contractual discussions led to the renewal in 2007 of the partnership agreement with ALCAN (firstly signed with Alcan in 2002). Discussions are advancing well to establish a strategic partnership with Novelis. A formal proposal has been submitted to the company by NRC-ATC. IRAP's ITA is involved in three local initiatives with local stake holders to stimulate the CI: |
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Examine the management of IP with key collaborators to ensure access to new knowledge by members of the 'cluster' community. |
Accepted (with clarification). The approach used so far with our key collaborators has been to maximize the speed of commercialization, knowledge generation for NRC-ATC, access to facilities and transfer of expertise for the other users in the cluster or in Canada. The agreements signed by NRC-ATC will continue to maximize the NRC’s strategic objectives allowing knowledge transfer to other users of the cluster community to create wealth, jobs and benefits for Canada. |
Friction Stir Welding: Work in progress with the system at the client site during the period. NRC-IRAP, NRC-ATC and Trans-AL Network (representing more than 100 SMEs in Quebec) are structuring an umbrella agreement to provide access to NRC facilities and expertise and to various technical resources and infrastructure associated with the CI for the transition from technology development to know-how adoption and implementation by SMEs in the cluster and in Canada. This new formula of support has also been used with industries from BC and ON. The number of partners in the cluster has now reached 70. |
Recommendation |
Management Response and Proposed Actions |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
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Seek out additional opportunities to inform, educate and build relationships with NRC-IRAP ITAs. |
Accepted. NRC-CPFC views NRC-IRAP as a critical partner in diffusing its business offering to the Canadian industrial sector – an extension to its 'sales and marketing force'. NRC-IMS management will meet with the Director General of NRC-IRAP to identify the best way of informing Industrial Technology Advisors of NRC-CPFC commercial programs and services. |
Over the course of the last reporting period, the NRC-CPFC management has continued to improve its relationship building with IRAP. As was agreed upon in the last fiscal year between the NRC-IRAP management and NRC-CPFC management, the Director responsible for NRC-CPFC was invited to the NRC-IRAP Ontario/Quebec regional meeting (Boucherville, November 28th-29th, 2007) to give an overview of the photonics cluster initiative and its value proposition to SMEs in Canada. Further discussions took place between the NRC-IRAP Director responsible for the photonic cluster and the NRC-CPFC Director to look at a strategy in delivering maximum impact to SMEs in Canada. Five projects were funded using NRC-IRAP funds ($250K) leveraging a total of $1,551K from industry. The NRC-IRAP and NRC-CPFC directors jointly took part in a mission to France to explore international photonics cluster-to-cluster interaction. Further discussions are underway to bring a Canadian Photonic industry delegation to France to explore business opportunities. NRC-IRAP assigned a local ITA to work with NRC-CPFC to promote the services of the Centre with the ITA network as well as to link to potential clients |
Continue to extend and link to the private sector as a means of making the services of NRC-CPFC known. |
Accepted. This is core to what NRC-CPFC must do – insuring diffusion of NRC-CPFC service offering to the industrial sector. NRC-CPFC will do so by making sure all of its business office staff members are fully integrated in the business practices of NRC-CPFC. NRC-CPFC will also continue to attend trade shows such as Photonics North and West as well as sit on committees of 'photonics industry associations' to inform potential industrial clients. |
NRC-CPFC has continued to extend its outreach to the private sector, hosting over 50 industrial clients in addition to no less than 15 international delegations within its premises and describing the various commercial offerings of the Centre and its value proposition. In addition, NRC-CPFC has continued to support Canadian SMEs through international industrial missions to the USA funded by the Enhanced Representation Initiative (ERI). NRC-CPFC continues to run its annual Executive Symposium on Photonics Commercialization, a high-level international event that brings Senior Executives from leading photonics corporations together with high-ranking government officials to present their perspective on the commercialization of photonics. Presenters showcased emerging commercial opportunities in optics and photonics and showed how these are changing the way we live. NRC-CPFC staff were invited to give presentations to Photonics West in California and Photonics North in Montreal. NRC-CPFC has produced and distributed marketing materials highlighting its new technical services to industry. NRC-IRAP provided $0.25M to 5 industry projects where the total project costs were $1.55M. |
Resolve attribution of property tax and hydro costs. |
Accepted. NRC-IMS management will meet with the DG of ASPM to estimate the true utilities cost and taxes of CPFC complex. Note, every day of service interruption affecting the CPFC results in a minimum of 2 days of shut down which cost CPFC $50,000 in lost opportunity. ASPM needs to be sensitive to such pressures. |
The cost of the utilities and taxes for NRC-CPFC has been valuated and has been incorporated within the business plan. The cost is paid to NRC-ASPM each fiscal year and taken out of the B-base funding allocation provided by Treasury Board. NRC-IMS management continues to work closely with NRC-ASPM to minimize the interruption of client services. Campus-wide power interruptions (for periodic maintenance by Hydro Ottawa and others) still result in a complete shutdown of the facility. In spite of forward planning, every time such an interruption occurs almost two full days of operation are lost, causing serious delays in the delivery of the milestones to NRC-CPFC clients. |
Examine market potential and set cost-recovery expectations for the NRC-CPFC. |
Accepted. CPFC will continue to update its marketing plan on a regular basis and seek guidance from other international organizations (such as OIDA) in doing so. As established in the original Treasury Board submission, the CPFC’s cost recovery policy is meant to cover some but by no means all of the operational costs of CPFC. The impact of CPFC will be measured by its effectiveness in stimulating the Canadian economy (job growth, SME traction, VC investment, commercial product on the market, etc.). CPFC will continue to run its bi-weekly business/marketing meeting to looking at CPFC forecasted revenues. |
NRC-CPFC continues to maximize its impact in responding to its client base – both industrial and academic. This may translate into providing services to start-ups where the return-on-investment is not immediate. For example, clients to demonstrate the feasibility of a product to investors can use prototypes fabricated by NRC-CPFC. This demonstration often leads to increased investment in the firm, which in turn translates, into increased business and revenue for NRC-CPFC as the client’s business ramps up. NRC-CPFC reviewed its hourly rates at the start of the financial year and raised them to $375 from $350, in line with market pressures. Over the course of the last fiscal year, NRC-CPFC has helped a record number of clients in numerous sectors of importance for Canada – ICT, Energy and Environment. Since opening operations in 2005, NRC-CPFC has had a 100% year-to-year increase in revenue generation. In order to maximize the Centre’s impact in helping Canadian industry and academic sector, an extended “shift” will be implemented in the fall of 2008. |
Establish a joint RMAF that takes into account the contributions, of funding, or program delivery of collaborators. |
This recommendation is not accepted. Carleton University is responsible for the training program and has received funds from the province to do so. NRC has no jurisdiction or authority in this area, although the NRC-CPFC is represented on the formal training program of Carleton University. |
This recommendation is not accepted. |
Continue to develop marketing and communication strategies, especially those directed directly at firms, including firms in Ottawa. |
Accepted. As stated previously, marketing and communication is key for a business unit such as the CPFC and a tool which needs to be exploited. CPFC will continue to obtain marketing and competitive intelligence using its internal BO forces and will try to integrate better with NRC-CISTI resources. As such, in its proposed business plan (2007-12), the CPFC anticipates partnering with NRC-CISTI to obtain competitive technical intelligence which will be distilled and analyzed to help identify CPFC's threats and opportunities – the results will be integrated in its business decision making process. On the communication front, the CPFC will continue to keep its website updated and disseminate its service offering to its stakeholders. A senior communication agent will be hired by the CPFC to perform these duties. |
In the last reporting period, NRC-CPFC hired a Technical Marketing Officer and a Senior Communications Officer. These two individuals were responsible for the development of the marketing material, which is now widely distributed, to the business community and various stakeholders. The team has made significant progress in re-vamping the website. During the same reporting period, NRC-CISTI and NRC-CPFC have been unsuccessful in filling the Technical Business Analyst position. NRC is presently running our third competition for this position. NRC-CPFC continues to maximize its outreach activities to the Ottawa photonic community through the delivery of its successful Annual Symposium on Photonics Commercialization and through the active support of the Ottawa Photonics Cluster and nationally through close interactions with stakeholders in Montreal, Quebec, Toronto/Waterloo and in western Canada. This year NRC-CPFC attended a number of national meetings including Photonics North, annual meeting and conference of the Canadian Institute for Photonics Innovations and the annual meeting and conference of CMC Microsystems. On the international front, NRC-CPFC, with the support of ERI, continues to strengthen existing relationship with regional industry-led photonics clusters such as those in Rochester, Tucson, Phoenix, Orlando, Boston, New York, San Jose, North Carolina, Colorado, France, Italy, Spain and the UK. |
Conduct a benchmarking study in approximately five years to gauge the position and strength of NRC-CPFC offering in relation to other centres. |
Accepted with changes. Although CPFC agrees that a benchmarking study would be needed in comparing the CPFC’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to other Centres, it needs to be done before the five-year mark. In fact, this exercise should be done on an on-going fashion as part of the marketing plan and concurrently with updating the CPFC technology roadmap - both set of data are needed in order to complete a comprehensive analysis of the competitive offering of the Centre. |
In 2007-08 NRC-CPFC, with the support of the Canadian Photonics Consortium (CPC) undertook a study of the status and impact of photonics in Canada in order to measure the industry’s competitiveness vis-à-vis other nations. In this fiscal year it:
The extensive and unique experience that NRC-CPFC has in this sector has been critical to the process. Throughout the last half of 2007-08, NRC-CPFC dedicated the services of one Business Development Officer to work with the CPC consultants to provide strategic, technical and logistical input into the process. |
Examine communication policies given the NRC-government of Ontario/Carleton University partnership. |
Accepted. This will depend of course on the continued support of the province of Ontario and Carleton University moving forward. So far, no major communication problems have been encountered between the three stakeholders. Carleton University and the Province of Ontario are quite amiable to calling the Centre ‘NRC's CPFC’. |
The NRC-CPFC management and Carleton University management meet on a regular basis to explore new funding opportunities through provincial and federal programs. Discussions are ongoing. |
Recommendations |
Management Response and Proposed Actions |
Progress Made in 2007-08 |
---|---|---|
NRC-HIA should develop a succession plan to ensure that research capacity at the Institute is not weakened with upcoming potential retirements of staff. |
Aging demographics and global competition for scientific talent are challenges for NRC research institutes, including NRC-HIA. As noted in the evaluation, the Institute took advantage of LRP funding to recruit new staff, including two outstanding scientists funded through the NRC New Horizons Program and to provide a research experience to a number of students and post-doctoral fellows. In response to the recommendation, institute groups are creating staffing outlooks for the next five to ten years which will be integrated into an Institute hiring plan. The plan will emphasize global recruitment at the entry level, an area where NRC has a slight competitive advantage. |
New talent is being recruited at the entry level with leadership potential as a trait to select for, all else being equal. Two RO recruitments completed and a third underway. Succession planning was a factor in the re-organization of DRAO, completed last summer. An anticipated retirement (PRO) took place and leadership was transferred seamlessly. Staff planning templates developed and will be implemented for incorporation into the next NRC-HIA Business Plan. |
There should be increased emphasis and efforts at NRC-HIA to systematically identify Canadian companies to be included in the work undertaken by the Institute for large international telescope project funded through the LRP. Progress made in Penticton, through NRC-HIA’s relationship with the Okanagan Research and Innovation Centre (ORIC) should be formally monitored and if deemed successful, NRC-HIA should consider a similar approach in Victoria. |
This recommendation concerns two separate areas where NRC-HIA works with companies: in the identifying, notifying and working with Canadian companies on LRP-related opportunities and in transferring technologies to the private sector for other applications. With respect to the first part, the Institute faces a number of challenges: building industrial capacity and interest, addressing communication and legal impediments and meeting stringent international performance standards. The considerable efforts that were made to identify Canadian expertise are documented in this report. As a result, Canadian companies that were successful in winning high technology contracts associated with the EVLA and ALMA projects demonstrated the impact of LRP funding and the effect of exacting requirements of international astronomy projects on pushing a company’s expertise to the leading edge. The Institute intends to continue pursuing avenues for industrial outreach related to international projects. Bid packages are being prepared for the ALMA Band 3 receiver production, the major deliverable to ALMA from NRC-HIA. NRC-HIA will position itself as an integrator and component contractor to Canadian companies while taking on the more specialized testing and quality control responsibilities. NRC-HIA will make an effort to win bids on components of projects that have more potential volume and market applications (such as the Band 1 receivers of ALMA) and that might attract more interest from companies. The institute will continue to work with and seek the advice of, the Canadian SKA Consortium, the organization that is directing SKA development and which includes industry representation. With respect to non-astronomy applications of associated technologies, NRC-HIA initiated the ORIC “experiment” in Penticton, which has achieved some success in a relatively short period of time. The institute recently commissioned an assessment of HIA-Victoria technology with precisely this aim. Formal monitoring of ORIC is present to some extent by virtue of the Agreements in place. As well, NRC acts as the secretary to the ORIC Board of Directors. NRC HIA will also continue to build on its relationship with the NRC –IRAP in identifying technology transfer opportunities for SMEs. |
The first phase of the Band 3 production plan was implemented through contracts to supply cryogenic low-noise amplifiers (Nanowave Inc.) and to assemble cryogenic mixer blocks. The company is using technology transferred from NRC-HIA. A consortium of companies was assembled to respond to a Request For Tender issued by the CSIRO (Australia) to supply 45 12m antennae for the ASKAP project (SKA Pathfinder telescope). The roughly $30M bid is based on NRC-HIA technology for making single piece composite dishes of this size. A systematic search was conducted. The DRAO won the “community Leadership” award at the Fifth Annual Silicon Vineyard Innovation Awards sponsored by the Okanagan Science & Technology Council (OSTEC). Peter Haubrich, the ORIC Principle was named “Member of the Year.” ORIC itself has become a major success story and is expanding beyond the borders of NRC-HIA to offer incubator and mentoring services. NRC engaged a locally well-known individual in its Business Development Office in Victoria. He played a key role in putting together the consortium that bid on the ASKAP antennae (see above). |
NRC-HIA should take into consideration the perceived concerns regarding the weakening of astronomical research at the Institute and, if determined to be valid, should take action to remedy the situation. |
It is the Institute’s view that this perception may no longer be valid: NRC-HIA has made a number of excellent junior recruitments, whose visibility is increasing as their research publications become more numerous and more cited. The two New Horizons candidates are considered to be at the level of Canada Research Chair Tier I recruitments at Canadian Universities. NRC will, however, attempt to quantify the relative performance of its Research staff to a representative external sample through the implementation of a system for monitoring citation rates and/or the impact factor of the journals accepting NRC-HIA publications. The results will be communicated to the astronomical community. An integrated hiring plan is to be developed (see Recommendation 1). |
The Institute selected three leading University departments to benchmark our research performance. The metric used was citation rates per published paper, as this provides a measure of impact that is independent of the size of the samples being compared. The results of this analysis showed that the impact of NRC HIA research staff was well ahead of two of the University departments and just slightly behind the third department. The results can be understood in terms of specific individuals located at the three Institutions. NRC HIA does not do any theory and the department that outperformed NRC did so because of their prominent theorists. |
NRC should secure funds for the remainder of the work assigned to NRC-HIA as outlined in the LRP and Mid-term Review documents to ensure that positive impacts continue. Significant impacts of NRC-HIA’s implementation of the LRP to date include strengthened research capacity at the Institute and increased opportunities for Canadian firms to participate in providing technology to international astronomical facilities. |
Action toward this goal has been ongoing for more than one year and is a high priority for NRC. The Director General of HIA is working with the Director General of Strategy and Development Branch and the NRC Senior Executive Committee on developing a case for continued funding and continues to interface with the Coalition for Canadian Astronomy to ensure its support. |
NRC stepped forward to cover basic requirements and to ensure key staff were kept in place. “Transition Funding” was provided through internal NRC reallocations for 2007-08. This has forced NRC to drop a proposed collaboration with Australia related to the SKA. The lack of long-term funding limits the ability of NRC-HIA to participate in the major international projects prioritized in the LRP and is limiting our ability to position Canadian firms to benefit from these high-profile Mega-projects. |
The next round of funding received to implement the LRP should be tracked separately in NRC-HIA’s financial system. |
The LRP is a complex array of international projects, each with its own reporting and cash management requirements, combined with initiatives related to improving the research capability of the Institute. As noted in the report, NRC-HIA aligned its own efforts with those of the LRP and leveraged the LRP funding with its own A-base as well as other funds from within NRC. Where full LRP funding was not available, certain activities were augmented by NRC-HIA A-base funds (chiefly salaries). All finances for individual projects were tracked in detail within the Institute and that will continue to be the case. However, in the future, the cash flow from any new funding received for the advancement of the LRP will be tracked at the top level to the extent allowed by the NRC Financial system. This will provide a more transparent picture of the interplay between NRC-HIA A-base funding and the LRP funding to better quantify the impact of the LRP. The LRP projects will continue to be tracked. |
All NRC-HIA projects are fully tracked following rigorous project-management principles and are entered into NRC’s financial systems in accordance with the newly implemented Business Planning Process. |
The difficulties of financially managing LRP long-term “Big Science” projects commitments within a five year planning cycle should be reviewed in light of a recommended framework by the Office of the National Science Advisor (ONSA)10. This proposed framework should be reviewed and discussed with the ONSA to determine how LRP projects might benefit and how it could be improved to better address some of the lessons learned during this evaluation and the needs of all Canadian “Big Science” projects in the future. |
With its many national facilities, NRC has a strong interest in seeing the “Big Science” issue for Canada resolved. NRC provided input to the original framework and participated in a subsequent workshop with 40 distinguished community leaders. As well, it sought input from its governing council on the proposed framework and participated in a workshop at the Canadian Light Source devoted to this issue. NRC, with all relevant agencies and organizations, is also participating in a working group sponsored by the Coalition for Canadian Astronomy to examine the barriers that were impeding progress toward implementing the LRP. The Working Group issued a report and circulated it to the participants and relevant stakeholders for further feedback. NRC intends to continue the dialog with all sectors of the astronomical community, including the ONSA, to address this issue and seek solutions. |
With key partners, NRC has established ACCA, the Agency Committee on Canadian Astronomy. Modeled on the well established Agency Committee on TRIUMF (ACT) that oversees the TRIUMF laboratory, the Agency Committee on Canadian Astronomy (ACCA) was formed in 1997 to tackle from multi-agency perspectives the overarching issues facing Canadian astronomy. These include the Long Range Plan implementation and the funding issues. Under the chair of the NRC President, the ACCA members include the heads of CSA, CFI, NSERC and Industry Canada. Canadian astronomy cuts across agencies to such an extent that it is increasingly important to coordinate efforts, given the increased number of players and funding sources. ACCA provides a forum for discussion on GOC policy on astronomy funding, including coordinating the GOC investment in astronomy and the provision of advice to the GOC on its policy with respect to astronomy. ACCA have put together a number of documents to advance discussions on “Big Science” policy in Canada. A recent report by the Inter-Agency Working Group on Major Investments in S&T titled “Major Investments in Science and Technology in Canada: A Discussion Paper” providing an overview of models for maintaining national “Big Science” infrastructure. |
If a second round of LRP funding is awarded, NRC should consider conducting a return on investment analysis and benefit-cost analysis, in coordination with other LRP-funded federal government organizations. If undertaken, these studies should be completed in advance of the next evaluation. |
NRC-HIA will examine whether it is opportune to initiate a follow-on study similar to that done in 1999 by the ARA group under contract to KPMG. This study provides a methodology template and sets a benchmark. Keeping in mind that the timeline required to assess benefits beyond the immediate economic impacts might prevent a full review before the next evaluation, NRC will look at the opportunity to conduct a return on investment analysis and benefit-cost analysis. Consultation with other Agencies will be undertaken if a decision to proceed is taken. |
No new developments since the second round have been allocated. |
10 - A Framework for the Evaluation, Funding and Oversight of Canadian Major Science Investments, Office of the National Science Advisor, January 2005
NRC follows Treasury Board Secretariat’s Travel policies and parameters. NRC does not have any Special Travel Authorities. |
Table 3-12: Financial Statements
INTRODUCTION
The following Financial Statement Discussion and Analysis (FSD&A) should be read in conjunction with the audited financial statements and accompanying notes for the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008.
The responsibility for the preparation of the FSD&A rests with the management of NRC. It has been prepared in accordance with the Public Sector Statement of Recommended Practice SORP-1.
The purpose of the FSD&A is to highlight information and provide explanations which enhance the users’ understanding of NRC’s financial position and results of operations, while demonstrating NRC’s accountability for its resources. Additional information on NRC’s performance is available in the NRC Departmental Performance Report (DPR) for 2007-08.
The FSD&A consists of two distinct segments: Highlights, and Discussion and Analysis. Please note that all financial information presented herein is denominated in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise indicated.
Special note regarding forward-looking statements
The words “estimate”, “will”, “intend”, “should”, “anticipate” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect assumptions and expectations of NRC, based on its experience and perceptions of trends and current conditions. Although NRC believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, they may prove to be inaccurate, and consequently NRC’s actual results could differ materially from expectations set out in this FSD&A. In particular, the risk factors described in the “Financial Risk and Uncertainty” section of this report could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those contemplated in forward-looking statements.
FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
STATEMENT OF OPERATIONS
Revenue: Revenue is important to NRC, not only as a means of financing its operating and capital expenditures, but also because it provides an indication of the value that NRC provides to its clients and collaborators. NRC earned total revenues of $155 million in 2007-08. Although total revenue decreased from $170 million in 2006-07, the reduction is not due to ongoing operations but rather to unusual revenue related issues. Sales of goods and services, revenue from other governments department excluding revenue adjustments related to the Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) program, and revenue from joint project and cost sharing agreements totalled $146 million in 2007-08, as compared to $145 million in 2006-07.
Further details on revenue components are available in the Financial Analysis section.
Expenses: Over the past three fiscal years, NRC’s total expenses have not significantly increased. In fact, NRC has only had a 2.3% rise in expenses since 2005-06. Furthermore, NRC’s major expense components have remained stable, as seen in the diagram provided below. The following two categories of expenses are most important to NRC from both a research program and cost perspective, and represent 66% of total expenses. All other significant expense variations are explained in the Financial Analysis section.
STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION
Assets: NRC’s total assets signify its ability to provide future services for Canadians. NRC’s total assets as at March 31, 2008 totalled $851 million. NRC’s largest single component is its capital assets, which represents 70% of the total. The following assets are highlighted to demonstrate NRC’s activity with private and public sector clients.
Net debt: The government’s net debt position is often called its “future revenue requirements” because this indicator provides a measure of the future revenues required to pay for past transactions and events. NRC’s net debt (financial assets less liabilities) as at March 31, 2008 reached $71 million, which represents a slight decrease of $1 million from the previous fiscal year. The decline in net debt signifies that NRC’s future revenue generation needs have decreased by 1.4%. Furthermore, the current year’s decline in net debt demonstrates that NRC’s revenues earned in 2007-08 sufficiently covered NRC’s total incremental spending, inclusive of its capital spending.
Equity of Canada: NRC’s equity of Canada as at March 31, 2008 was $541 million ($544 million as at March 31, 2007), which illustrates NRC’s net resources (financial and non-financial) that will be used to provide invaluable future services for Canadians. NRC’s equity of Canada is comprised of its Non-Financial Assets ($612 million) less its Net Debt ($71 million). NRC’s largest component of Non-Financial Assets is capital assets.
NON-FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
NRC Strategy 2006-2011: NRC continued implementation of its strategy, Science at Work for Canada and contributed to the advancement of the federal S&T Strategy. Following are some key achievements that were realized during the fiscal year:
Governance: NRC has continued to implement a number of initiatives to improve its corporate governance, in keeping with the broad government goal of improved management in the public sector and the NRC Strategy.
In 2007-08, an updated Statement on the Role of Council was approved by members in order to incorporate greater input on strategic financial management. Consequently, NRC’s Executive Committee will assume responsibility for strategic financial advice in current year budget reviews, including initial budget allocations; financial situation arising from NRC’s multi-year plans; NRC’s long term capital plan; and other matters that may have a significant impact on NRC’s budget.
In 2007-08, NRC progressed in its implementation of the financial management model which holds the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) accountable to both the Comptroller General and the department head for financial management in the organization. The model was first introduced by NRC in 2005-06 as a result of recommendations provided for all federal government departments by the Office of the Comptroller General.
In 2007-08, all NRC Institutes/Branches/ Programs (IBP) were asked to develop rolling three-year business plans aligned with the NRC Strategy and the federal science and technology strategy. These business plans will be updated on an annual basis to reflect changing internal and external factors, as well as the ongoing decisions and priorities of both the federal government and the NRC Senior Executives. The business planning process not only supports ongoing NRC strategic planning efforts, but also serves as the organization’s key mechanism for financial resource allocation decisions (which are made by the Senior Executive Committee of NRC). The information contained in the business plans is expected to help NRC with its efforts in financial planning and budgeting, long-term capital planning (including real property), human resource planning, and information technology planning. Finally, the business plans serve as a critical vehicle for NRC-wide communication, helping senior managers to identify opportunities for greater cross-NRC collaboration.
Financial Statement Audit of NRC: In 2007-08, NRC’s financial statements were prepared in accordance with Treasury Board accounting policies and year-end instructions issued by the Office of the Comptroller General, which are consistent with Canadian generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for the public sector. The financial statements were audited by the Office of the Auditor General. The audit provides added assurance with regards to the accuracy and completeness of NRC’s financial information, therefore providing NRC’s Council and senior management team with reliable information, from which strategic decisions can be taken.
Renewal of Terms and Conditions: In 2007-08, NRC-IRAP renewed the Terms and Conditions of its most significant transfer payment program ($72.5 million in expenses in 2007-08) for a period of 5 years. As such, Canada’s small and medium sized enterprises will continue to receive essential technological and financial contributions from NRC, therefore increasing Canada’s ability to innovate and maintain its presence within the global market place.
Audit of NRC-IRAP contribution recipients: In 2007-08, the audit completed on sample recipients of contributions from NRC-IRAP showed improved compliance with program requirements. In 2007-08, 87% of the contribution agreements audited received an unqualified audit opinion. This is a significant improvement from previous years, where unqualified audit results amounted to 54% in 2006-07 and 38% in 2005-06. A major contribution for this year’s success is due to NRC-IRAP’s recent implementation of a new financial monitoring framework which incorporates risk assessments prior to the commencement of, and during, each project.
RISKS & UNCERTAINTIES
As a federal government departmental corporation, NRC funds the majority of its salary, operating and capital expenditures from parliamentary appropriations. The non-salary portion of this funding is fixed, with no indexing for price increases. As a result, the actual funding for NRC, in terms of buying power, has been declining over the past decade. In particular, the impact of rising costs related to payment in lieu of taxes and utilities is significant for NRC.
NRC owns and manages 185 specialized buildings that comprise approximately 560,140 square meters of space. It also has an equipment and informatics base of approximately $197 million ($203 million in 2006-07) net book value. NRC’s capacity to fund the upgrade or replacement of these assets from its appropriations is limited, and as a result will need to secure sources of funding external to NRC for this purpose.
In addition, since 2004, the federal government has announced a series of budget reductions across federal departments as part of its realignment strategy and initiative to increase its efficiency. The impact on NRC has been significant and challenging. The cumulative reductions to date have amounted to $33.3 million, with a minimum expected ongoing reduction of $12.9 million per year. On a short-term basis, NRC has adapted to these changes by reducing investments in certain programs.
To help position itself to meet these challenges, NRC has implemented changes since 2005-06 in its governance structure and has made significant progress towards a new, focused business strategy. The completion of IBP business plans in 2007-08 marks a significant progress for NRC in order to continuously improve the planning, allocation and monitoring of resources, which will in turn help alleviate some of the financial pressures facing NRC.
Details of other factors influencing NRC’s budget pressures are provided below.
Sunsetting Funding: In order to ensure value for money, the Government of Canada’s practice is to provide funding for new initiatives on a sunsetting basis. This means that rather than providing a permanent increase in the NRC allotment, the government allocates funding for a limited period of time, with the option for renewal. Renewal is conditional on performance, linkages to priorities and availability of funding.
Although funding is not necessarily provided on an ongoing basis, new government-approved initiatives, such as the establishment of technology cluster sites in communities across Canada, often entail an ongoing commitment from NRC in terms of the construction and maintenance of new specialized facilities and the hiring of staff. There is also an expectation by the communities that support these new initiatives, and in some cases invest in them, that they will exist beyond the particular funding window. These challenges add complexity to the organization’s planning, budgeting and operations.
Currently, NRC has several initiatives and projects funded on a sunsetting basis. Examples include the following:
Foreign Currency: NRC purchases roughly $55 million per year in goods and services in currencies other than the Canadian dollar, which exposes NRC to fluctuations in foreign exchange. The majority of foreign purchases (89% on average over the last five years) are transacted in US dollars. Due to the strengthening of the Canadian dollar over the last year, NRC has benefited from an increase in purchasing power over 2006-07 levels of approximately $4.2 million US. A continued strong Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar will benefit NRC’s purchasing power, whereas a future decline in the Canadian dollar will have the opposite effect.
The 2007-08 gain in purchasing power was somewhat negated by the reduction in Canadian dollars received from foreign sales. In 2007-08, NRC received $34 million CDN on sales of $32.9 million US. By way of comparison, in 2006-07, NRC received $33.8 million CDN from $29.5 million US in sales.
Dependence on Revenue: The nature of NRC’s activities permits NRC to generate revenues in order to reinvest in its operations. NRC’s dependence on external sources of funding has been growing since the early 1990s. The portion of NRC’s operating and capital expenditures funded from external sources of income was roughly 11% in 1991-92. In 2007-08, this percentage had climbed to over 24%.
In particular, NRC maintains technology centres that rely on external sources of revenue to fund the majority of their operations, namely NRC Centre for Surface Transportation (NRC-CSTT) and NRC Canadian Hydraulics Centre (NRC-CHC). In addition, NRC’s two largest institutes –NRC Institute for Aerospace Research (NRC-IAR) and NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) – rely on external sources of revenue to fund over 45% and 35% of their operations respectively. Significant downturns in the industries or federal departments that these groups support will greatly impact NRC’s ability to continue operations at current levels.
Finally, it is important to note that NRC must strike a fine balance between providing contract research services that generate needed revenue, and performing the government-funded research that keeps NRC at the leading-edge of science, technology and innovation. Too much emphasis on revenue generating contract research could compromise NRC’s advanced knowledge and technology base, which in the long-term will reduce NRC’s ability to serve industry and respond to the needs of the nation in critical fields such as energy, the environment, health and wellness, and other priority areas outlined in the NRC Strategy.
FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
The following is an analysis that explains the meaning of certain financial statement items, significant variances, and financial trends.
ASSETS
Due from Consolidated Revenue Fund: This amount represents the amount of cash that NRC is entitled to draw from the federal government treasury. This includes cash to discharge its liabilities for which NRC has already received an appropriation, as well as revenue received but not spent. The $3.2 million decrease between 2006-07 and 2007-08 is due to the decrease in revenue available for use in subsequent years.
Accounts Receivable:
NRC-IRAP TPC Repayable Contributions
The NRC-IRAP Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) program has been administered by NRC on behalf of Industry Canada since 1998. This program provides conditionallyrepayable contributions to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to support the pre-commercialization phase of their technology development. This conditional repayment program in most cases requires quarterly repayments of the contribution based on a percentage of the recipient’s gross revenue. This program terminated March 31, 2006, although it will continue to fund, and require repayment from existing agreements during its wind-down phase.
This program supports small start-up firms, whose future success is often entirely dependent on one technology. Failure to bring the technology to market, at times, can result in the firm ceasing operations. Even with the very high-risk nature of this program, NRC has received repayments amounting to approximately 25% of contributions disbursed as at March 31, 2008 (20% – 2007). With 280 projects still being administered, this percentage is expected to increase over the next decade.
The NRC-IRAP TPC accounts receivable as at March 31, 2008 was $9.9 million ($10.7 million - 2007) with a corresponding allowance for doubtful accounts of $8.3 million ($7.1 million - 2007), highlighting the high risk nature of the program.
Trade Receivables and NRC-IRAP Audit Recoveries
NRC had accounts receivable with external clients worth $20.9 million as at March 31, 2008 ($19.6 million - 2007) with a corresponding allowance for doubtful accounts equal to $1.1 million ($2.2 million - 2007). This amount represents receivables for work done with external clients as well as receivables for audit findings for NRC-IRAP. Write-offs in 2007-08 were $938 thousand ($603 thousand in 2006-07), which is low given the total value of NRC revenue.
Aged Accounts Receivable
In 2007-08 and 2006-07, 80% of accounts receivable are aged 90 days or below. NRC has successfully focused on collecting its outstanding receivables. The aging of all accounts receivable, gross of allowances, as at March 31 is as follows:
Inventory for Resale: NRC produces a number of products that are purchased by external clients, namely the Model National Construction Codes, monographs and certified reference materials. Inventory for resale is presented at its lower of cost or net realizable value and has decreased by $545 thousand (19%) over 2007 closing values. The decline is due to an increase in the allowance for obsolete inventory, increased by $500 thousand to $1.1 million in 2007-08.
Equity Investments: As part of its mandate to promote industrial innovation in Canada, NRC provides financial assistance to firms through access to equipment, intellectual property and incubation space in its laboratories and Industrial Partnership Facilities. Since these companies are often in their infancy and cannot afford to pay the full cost of the assistance received, NRC, on occasion, takes an equity position in the company in return for the assistance provided. This helps the firms survive the critical technology development stage. It is not management’s intention to hold equity investments over the long-term. NRC will consider timely opportunities for divestiture of equity investments by taking into account the interests, market liquidity and expected future growth of the company.
The full value recorded on the statement of financial position reflects NRC's investment in publicly-traded companies as its shares in privately held corporations are deemed to have no market value. Details of NRC’s investment in public companies are as follows:
Company Name | Number of Shares |
Amount Recorded in Financial Statements |
Market Value at March 31, 2008 |
---|---|---|---|
PharmaGap Inc. |
1,305,425 |
$ 392,933 |
$ 117,488 |
Chemaphor Inc. |
1,260,305 |
$ 252,061 |
$ 277,267 |
Pure Energy Visions Corp. |
210,000 |
$ 1 |
$ 79,800 |
Omnitech Consultant Group Inc. |
866,494 |
$ 1 |
$ 0 |
IMRIS Inc. |
795,578 |
$ 1 |
$ 3,540,322 |
Total |
4,437,802 |
$ 644,997 |
$ 4,014,877 |
NRC’s equity investments, presented on the Statement of Financial Position at $645 thousand, reached a fair market value of $4 million as at March 31, 2008, which represents an increase of $3.3 million from the previous fiscal year. The increase is mainly due to the initial public offering of IMRIS Inc. in 2007-08, in which NRC had previously received common shares in settlement of debt owing.
Holmes Fund Investments: The Holmes Endowment Fund is an investment bequeathed to NRC in July 1994. Up to two-thirds of the endowment fund's yearly net income is used to finance the H.L. Holmes award on an annual basis. The award covers a one or two-year period and provides the opportunity to Canadian post-doctoral students to study at world famous graduate schools or research institutes under outstanding researchers. In 2007-08, NRC granted $93 thousand to the recipient of the 2007 NRC H.L. Holmes Award who will receive a total of $198 thousand, ending in July 2009. The recipient is using the award to fund two years of collaborative research at the Harvard Medical School.
In addition, the endowment fund reached a fair market value of $4.5 million as at March 31, 2008 ($4.3 million as at March 31, 2007). The investments within the portfolio had an average effective return of 4.7%. The endowment fund is presented at an amortized cost of $4.3 million ($4.2 million as at March 31, 2007) on the Statement of Financial Position and not at fair value.
Prepaid Expenses: NRC’s prepaid expense as at March 31, 2008 was $13.6 million. NRC prepays for goods and services only when contractually obligated. Subscriptions form the primary component of NRC’s prepaid expenses. NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), Canada’s science library, subscribes to many of the world’s major scientific and technical journals and databases.
Capital Assets: NRC’s capital asset net book value has decreased from $601 million in 2006-07 to $596 million in 2007-08. This $5 million decrease largely transpired given that NRC’s amortization for the year ($66.6 million) exceeded its acquisitions ($60.9 million). The cost of capital assets has increased by 3% to $1,348 million in 2007-08. The $40.6 million increase is attributable to $60.9 million in acquisitions, offset by $20.3 million in various transfers, disposals and write-offs.
Acquisitions
NRC spent $60.9 million on capital expenditures during 2007-08, a slight decrease from the $62.1 million spent in 2006-07 (excluding new capital leases recognized of $58.1 million). Of the $60.9 million in capital asset additions, $21 million relates to assets which are currently under construction. The remaining balance is primarily made up of acquisitions related to machinery and equipment ($25.3 million), as well as buildings and facilities ($7.8 million).
The following represents significant capital assets expenditures in 2007-08:
LIABILITIES
Accounts Payable and Accrued Liabilities: NRC’s accounts payable and accrued liabilities decreased by $3.1 million in 2007-08, mainly explained by the following:
NRC’s accrued salary which represents salary earned by personnel up to March 31, 2008 for which they have not received compensation, decreased by $2.3 million in comparison with the previous year. The accrual decreased this year given that a retroactive salary adjustment was recorded in the previous year following the ratification of the Administrative Services (AS), Administrative Support Group (AD) and Computer Systems Administrative (CS) collective agreements. In addition, NRC did not require an accrual at year end as was done in the previous year for its portion of payments in lieu of taxes from the City of Ottawa, given that all of its liabilities were paid as at March 31, 2008, reducing accounts payable and accrued liabilities by $2.2 million. The decreases are offset by a $1.1 million increase in contractor holdback liabilities at year-end, given that NRC had several large construction projects in progress.
Vacation Pay and Compensatory Leave: Due to the nature of NRC’s operations, a number of NRC’s collective agreements do not impose maximum limits of accumulated vacation to be carried forward to subsequent fiscal years by employees. Consequently, vacation pay and compensatory leave have steadily increased over the years.
Deferred Revenue:
Contributions Related to Leased Capital Assets
Deferred revenue is recognized for contributions related to leased capital assets. For NRC purposes, this is associated with leases of facilities for $1 per year with the University of Alberta, the University of Prince Edward Island, and the University of Western Ontario. As at March 31, 2008 this balance was $59.8 million. This balance has decreased by $2.7 million in the current year, and the decline is expected to continue given that associated revenue is recognized in accordance with the useful life of the related asset. Consequently, this account increases only when new capital leases are established. On such occasions, NRC will establish a non-financial capital asset as well as corresponding deferred revenue equal to the value of the capital lease. Over time and as the asset is used, NRC recognizes equal amounts of amortization and revenue (lease inducement revenue). As a result, no impact occurs on NRC’s net cost of operations or its Equity of Canada.
Specified Purpose Accounts
NRC undertakes collaborative work with clients for the mutual benefit of both parties. Funding provided by the collaborator is placed in a Specified Purpose Account (SPA) and used over the duration of the project. Amounts remaining in the SPA at year-end are recorded as deferred revenue as it is expected that it will be used in the upcoming year on the project. At the end of 2007-08, this amount totalled $14.5 million, representing an increase of 10% over the previous year.
Other
Other deferred revenue consists primarily of research press deferred revenue, as well as conference and seminar registration deferred revenue. NRC had other deferred revenues of $6.9 million as at March 31, 2008 as compared to $9.2 million at March 31, 2007. The decrease of $2.3 million (25%) is mainly attributable to the decrease in the number of Research Press subscriptions outstanding as at March 31, 2008 as well as the decline in the value of the US dollar given that all Research Press subscriptions are sold in US currency.
Environmental liability: NRC’s environmental liability has decreased from $300 thousand to $100 thousand in 2007-08. The estimated liability to remediate the land was reduced following a comprehensive environmental study completed on NRC’s Penticton solid waste landfill site. Furthermore, to ensure the protection of the environment and the public, NRC has finalized in 2007-08 its plan to assess all research sites occupied by NRC. The first phase, which is scheduled to be completed in 2008-09, consists of site risk assessments. This first phase is critical to ensure that NRC directs further attention and resources on priority research sites.
REVENUES
NRC’s revenues for 2007-08 were $155 million as compared to $170 million in 2006-07. Recent trends in revenue components are shown in the following graph. The decrease results from isolated transactions, which when removed, demonstrate that NRC’s ongoing operational revenue actually increased by $1 million in the current fiscal year.
Services of a Non-Regulatory Nature: In 2007-08, 40% ($62.9 million) of NRC revenues were generated from services of a non-regulatory nature, which primarily consists of research services provided directly to industry and academic clients. In 2007-08, NRC Institute for Aerospace Research (NRC-IAR) and NRC Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) accounted for over 43% of NRC’s service revenues, compared to 46% in 2006-07.
Sales of Goods and Information Products: As part of its goal to disseminate scientific and technical information of importance to industry, NRC has publications and certified reference materials that it sells to clients. Total sales of goods and information products totalled $11.8 million in 2007-08, as compared to $11.3 million in 2006-07. The largest component of revenue derived from sales of goods and information products is due to research press journals sold through Canada’s scientific library. Research press income earned in 2007-08 was $6.5 million, compared to $5.8 million in 2006-07. This increase would have been more significant, however the steady decline of the US dollar in 2007-08 has reduced the impact, given that all research press journals are sold in US currency.
Rights and Privileges: Royalty revenue is earned from companies that license the rights to use NRC technology. Royalties are typically based on a percentage of the licensee’s sales. In 2007-08, NRC generated $9.5 million in royalties, up from $6.7 million in 2006-07 and $5.8 million in 2005-06. The rise in revenue is primarily associated with NRC’s Institute for Biological Sciences (IBS) which earned revenue of $5.3 million in 2007-08, up from $3.5 million in 2006-07 and $3.8 million in 2005-06, from which its largest royalties are earned through its license for the Meningitis C vaccine.
Lease and Use of Property: Facilitating access to NRC researchers and facilities is an important part of technology transfer at NRC. To this end, NRC provides laboratory space to companies on a commercial basis, often as part of a collaboration or technology transfer agreement. Revenue from lease and use of property amounted to $4.3 million in 2007-08, as compared to $3.2 million in 2006-07. The 34% increase in the current year is primarily associated with additional agreements at NRC Biotechnology Research Institute and NRC Industrial Materials Institute.
Financial Arrangements with Other Departments and Agencies: NRC undertakes research on behalf of other government departments. The incremental costs associated with this work are reimbursed to NRC. In 2007-08, the amount of work undertaken for other government departments was significant, totalling $46.6 million ($57 million in 2006-07 and $58.8 million in 2005-06). The decline of $10.4 million in revenue is associated with NRC’s Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) program with Industry Canada. The TPC transfer payment program terminated on March 31, 2006, and as such only existing associated contracted projects continue to receive funding from NRC. Consequently, revenue has declined significantly in the past three years. In 2007-08, the NRC received a total of $4.5 million, as compared to $15 million in 2006-07 and $18.8 million in 2005-06.
Revenues from Joint Project and Cost Sharing Agreements: NRC also receives income through collaborative research projects that involve cost sharing arrangements for work that is likely to lead to new expertise or technology. In 2007-08, collaborative funding across all sectors at NRC earned a total of $15.5 million ($17.2 million in 2006-07 and $21 million in 2005-06). Revenue from joint research projects are not recognized until the project is complete. As such, revenue can fluctuate slightly depending on the number of on-going projects at year end.
EXPENSES
As noted in the Highlights section, NRC’s expenses increased from $847 million in 2006-07 to $853 million in 2007-08. 49% of expenses represents salary and benefits costs.
Salaries and Employee Future Benefits
Salaries decreased by approximately $1 million from 2006-07. In 2006-07, three collective agreements were ratified at year end, therefore causing a large one time adjustment of $4 million for retroactive pay increments in addition to a pay equity settlement of $7.6 million. The absence of one time adjustments in 2007-08 were offset by increases for general pay increments.
Grants and Contributions
In 2007-08, grants and contributions from NRC remained stable in comparison to the previous fiscal year. The largest category of NRC grants and contributions relates to funding allocated to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through NRC-IRAP. These increased to $72.5 million in 2007-08, from $65 million in 2006-07. However, NRC-IRAP distributed only $2.9 million in contribution for the TPC program, down from $11.6 million in 2006-07, due to the winding down of the program. A decrease in contributions expense of $3.6 million also resulted from an increase related to the allowance for uncollectible (or write-off) TPC receivables in 2007-08, as the transfer payment to Industry Canada is reduced accordingly.
NRC’s contribution to TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, increased by $6 million to $51.5 million in 2007-08 ($45.5 million in 2006-07). The increase was provided to fund operation and maintenance expenses in order to satisfy facility conformity costs. TRIUMF is an unincorporated association that operates a research laboratory.
Contributions made through the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astronomy (NRC-HIA) to support international telescopes totalled $9.2 million in 2007-08, from $12.6 million in 2006-07. The decrease is due to instrument construction delays as well as the purchasing power increase of the Canadian dollar.
Utilities, Materials and Supplies
In 2007-08, expenses related to utilities, materials and supplies reached $89.3 million, as compared to $81 million in 2006-07. The $8.3 million increase primarily results from NRC’s accounting treatment of prepaid expenses. In 2006-07, NRC-CISTI set up a large prepaid for its serial renewal subscriptions, consequently reducing the expense incurred in 2006-07. As a result, the expense incurred in 2007-08 increased by approximately $5.4 million. The remaining balance can be attributed to NRC Herzberg Institute for Astronomy, which incurred additional expenses of $2.9 million in 2007-08 due to project requirements.
Bad Debts
NRC’s bad debt expense increased from $3.7 million in 2006-07 to $6.4 million in 2007-08. The increase is related to write-offs recorded in the year for bad debts within NRC-IRAP’s TPC program, as discussed within the Grants and Contributions section.
Awards
In 2007-08, award costs increased from $1.7 million in 2006-07 to $3.2 million in 2007-08. The additional award costs are related to NRC’s rights and privileges revenue, which was $9.5 million in 2007-08. The awards expense has a direct relationship with revenue given that patent awards are distributed to personnel as income is earned from the respective license agreements. NRC distributes a maximum of 35% of revenue earned to personnel responsible for the creation of the commercial patent. Consequently, a rise in royalty revenue results in a corresponding increase in award costs.
Other Expenses
Other Expenses amounted to $58 thousand in 2007-08, as compared to $3.1 million in 2006-07. The main reason for the decrease in other expenses is due to the pay equity settlement recognized in 2006-07 of $2.9 million related to damages pursuant to the Canadian Human Rights Act to all Eligible Employees of the Research Council Employees’ Association.
National Research Council of Canada
Statement of Operations
for the year ended March 31
(in thousands of dollars) | 2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
Expenses (Note 13) |
|
|
|
Research and development |
601,723 |
|
600,627 |
Technology and Industry support |
251,265 |
|
246,028 |
|
852,988 |
|
846,655 |
|
|
|
|
Revenues (Note 14) |
|
|
|
Research and development |
101,740 |
|
109,621 |
Technology and Industry support |
52,790 |
|
60,536 |
|
154,530 |
|
170,157 |
|
|
|
|
Net Cost of Operations |
698,458 |
|
676,498 |
The accompanying notes form an integral part of these financial statements.
National Research Council of Canada
Statement of Equity of Canada
for the year ended March 31
(in thousands of dollars) | 2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
Equity of Canada, beginning of year |
544,220 |
|
507,227 |
Net cost of operations |
(698,458) |
|
(676,498) |
Net cash provided by Government (Note 3) |
673,127 |
|
655,005 |
Change in due from the Consolidated Revenue Fund |
(3,207) |
|
30,874 |
Services received without charge (Note 15) |
25,133 |
|
27,612 |
|
|
|
|
Equity of Canada, end of year |
540,815 |
|
544,220 |
The accompanying notes form an integral part of these financial statements.
National Research Council of Canada
Statement of Cash Flow
for the year ended March 31
(in thousands of dollars) | 2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Operating Activities |
|
|
|
Net cost of operations |
698,458 |
|
676,498 |
Non‑cash items |
|
|
|
Amortization of capital assets |
(66,555) |
|
(64,210) |
Gain on sale of equity investments |
- |
|
223 |
Net (loss) gain on disposal of capital assets |
(597) |
|
6,823 |
Services received without charge (Note 15) |
(25,133) |
|
(27,612) |
Other |
1,166 |
|
2,451 |
Variations in Statement of Financial Position |
|
|
|
Increase in accounts receivable and advances |
484 |
|
5,791 |
Decrease in inventory for resale |
(545) |
|
(716) |
Increase in endowment fund investments |
118 |
|
115 |
Increase in prepaid expenses |
884 |
|
7,280 |
Increase (decrease) in inventory for consumption |
334 |
|
(105) |
Decrease (increase) in liabilities |
4,169 |
|
(55,746) |
Cash used by operating activities |
612,783 |
|
550,792 |
|
|
|
|
Capital Investment Activities |
|
|
|
Acquisitions of capital assets |
60,939 |
|
120,172 |
Proceeds from disposal of capital assets |
(594) |
|
(15,327) |
Cash used by capital investment activities |
60,345 |
|
104,845 |
|
|
|
|
Investing Activities |
|
|
|
Proceeds from sale of equity investments |
(1) |
|
(632) |
Cash used by investing activities |
(1) |
|
(632) |
|
|
|
|
Financing Activities |
|
|
|
Net cash provided by Government of Canada (Note 3) |
(673,127) |
|
(655,005) |
The accompanying notes form an integral part of these financial statements.
National Research Council of Canada
Notes to Financial Statements
Year ended March 31, 2008
1. Authority and Objectives
The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) exists under the National Research Council Act and is a departmental corporation named in Schedule II of the Financial Administration Act. The objectives of NRC are to create, acquire and promote the application of scientific and engineering knowledge to meet Canadian needs for economic, regional and social development and to promote and provide for the use of scientific and technical information by the people and the Government of Canada.
In delivering its mandate, NRC reports under the following program activities:
These program activities also include NRC’s priorities of enhancing development of sustainable technology clusters for wealth creation and social capital as well as program management for a sustainable organization.
2. Summary of Significant Accounting Policies
These financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Treasury Board accounting policies and year‑end instructions issued by the Office of the Comptroller General, which are consistent with Canadian generally accepted accounting principles for the public sector. The significant accounting policies are:
a) Parliamentary Appropriations
NRC is financed mainly by the Government of Canada through Parliamentary appropriations. Appropriations provided to NRC do not parallel financial reporting according to Canadian generally accepted accounting principles since appropriations are primarily based on cash flow requirements. Consequently, items recognized in the statement of operations and the statement of financial position are not necessarily the same as those provided through appropriations from Parliament. Note 3 provides a high‑level reconciliation between the bases of reporting.
b) Net Cash Provided by Government
NRC operates within the Consolidated Revenue Fund, which is administered by the Receiver General for Canada. All cash received by NRC is deposited to the Consolidated Revenue Fund and all cash disbursements made by NRC are paid from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. The net cash provided by Government is the difference between all cash receipts and all cash disbursements including transactions between departments (including agencies) of the federal government.
c) Due from the Consolidated Revenue Fund
Due from the Consolidated Revenue Fund represents the amount of cash that NRC is entitled to draw from the Consolidated Revenue Fund without further appropriations.
d) Revenues / Deferred revenue
e) Expenses
f) Employee future benefits
i) Pension Benefits
Eligible employees participate in the Public Service Pension Plan, a multiemployer plan administered by the Government of Canada. NRC’s contributions to the Plan are charged to expense in the year incurred and represent NRC’s total obligation to the Plan. Current legislation does not require NRC to make contributions for any actuarial deficiencies of the Plan.
ii) Severance Benefits
Employees are entitled to severance benefits under labour contracts or conditions of employment. These benefits are accrued as employees render the services necessary to earn them. The obligation relating to the benefits earned by employees is calculated using information derived from the results of the actuarially determined liability for employee severance benefits for the Government as a whole.
g) Accounts receivable
Accounts receivable are stated at amounts expected to be ultimately realized; a provision is made for receivables where recovery is considered uncertain.
h) Conditionally repayable contributions
Conditionally repayable contributions are contributions that, all or part of which become repayable, if conditions specified in the contribution agreement come into effect. Accordingly, they are not recorded on the Statement of Financial Position until the conditions specified in the agreement are satisfied at which time they are then recorded as a receivable and a reduction in transfer payment expenses. An estimated allowance for uncollectibility is recorded where appropriate.
i) Contingent liabilities
Contingent liabilities are potential liabilities, which may become actual liabilities when one or more future events occur or fail to occur. To the extent that the future event is likely to occur or fail to occur, and a reasonable estimate of the loss can be made, an estimated liability is accrued and an expense recorded. If the likelihood is not determinable or an amount cannot be reasonably estimated, the contingency is disclosed in the notes to the financial statements.
j) Environmental liabilities
Environmental liabilities reflect the estimated costs related to the management and remediation of environmentally contaminated sites. Based on management’s best estimates, a liability is accrued and an expense recorded when the contamination occurs or when NRC becomes aware of the contamination and is obligated, or is likely to be obligated to incur such costs. If the likelihood of NRC’s obligation to incur these costs is either not determinable or unlikely, or if an amount cannot be reasonably estimated, the costs are disclosed as contingent liabilities in the notes to the financial statements.
k) Inventory
Inventory for resale and for consumption is recorded at the lower of cost (using the average cost method) or net realizable value. The cost is charged to operations in the year in which the items are sold or used.
l) Equity investments
Equity investments include shares in publicly and privately held companies. Equity investments are typically obtained as a result of debt settlement negotiations or as a result of non‑monetary transactions (where financial assistance at better‑than‑market conditions was provided to firms through access to intellectual property, equipment and incubation space in laboratories). If the estimates of the non‑monetary transactions cannot be determined, the equity investments are initially recorded at a nominal value. Otherwise they are initially recorded at fair value based on market prices. If the fair value of equity investments becomes lower than the book value and this decline in value is considered to be other than temporary, the equity investments are written down to fair value.
m) Endowment Fund Investments
Endowments consist of restricted donations subject to externally imposed restrictions stipulating that the resources be maintained permanently. Income from the investment of endowments may only be used for the purposes established by the donors.
Endowments are recognized as an asset when the amount to be received can be reasonably estimated and ultimate collection is reasonably assured. Income from endowments is recorded as deferred revenue and recognized as revenue in the year in which the related expenses are incurred.
Funds received for endowments are invested in bonds and are carried at amortized cost. The premium or discount determined at the time of acquisition is amortized until the security’s maturity. Fair value of bonds is based on market prices.
n) Foreign Currency Transactions
Transactions involving foreign currencies are translated into Canadian dollar equivalents using rates of exchange in effect at the time of those transactions. Monetary assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies are translated using rates at year end. Gains and losses resulting from foreign currency translation are reported on the Statement of Operations according to the activities to which they relate. Net gains and losses relating to the sale of goods or services in foreign currency are included in revenues. Net gains and losses relating to the purchase of goods or services in foreign currency are included in expenses.
o) Capital Assets and Amortization
Capital assets and leasehold improvements having an initial cost of $5,000 or more are recorded at their acquisition cost. Contributed capital assets are recorded at market value at the date of contribution. NRC does not capitalize intangibles, works of art and historical treasures that have cultural, aesthetic or historical value. Assets acquired under capital leases are initially recorded at the present value of the minimum lease payments at the inception of the lease. Capital assets held for sale are recorded at the lower of their carrying value or fair value less cost to sell and no amortization is recorded. Amortization of capital assets is calculated on a straight‑line basis over the estimated useful life of the asset as follows:
Asset Class |
Amortization Period |
---|---|
Land |
Not applicable |
Buildings and facilities |
25 years |
Works and infrastructure |
25 years |
Machinery, equipment and furniture |
10 years |
Informatics equipment |
5 years |
Informatics software |
5 years |
Vehicles |
5 years |
Aircraft |
10 years |
Leasehold improvements |
Lesser of the remaining term of the lease or useful life of the improvement |
Assets under construction |
Once in service, in accordance with asset class |
Leased capital assets |
In accordance with asset class |
Where NRC enters into land leases at a nominal value, the transaction is considered as a non‑monetary transaction and is recorded at fair value. Fair value of the transaction is based on market prices. If the estimates of the non‑monetary transactions cannot be determined, the amount of the transaction is recorded at a nominal value.
p) Measurement Uncertainty
The preparation of these financial statements in accordance with Treasury Board accounting policies and year‑end instructions issued by the Office of the Comptroller General, which are consistent with Canadian generally accepted accounting principles for the public sector requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenues and expenses reported in the financial statements. At the time of preparation of these statements, management believes the estimates and assumptions to be reasonable. The most significant items where estimates are used are contingent liabilities, environmental liabilities, the liability for employee severance benefits, the allowance for doubtful accounts, the fair value of non‑monetary transactions related to leased capital assets and the useful life of capital assets. Actual results could significantly differ from those estimated. Management's estimates are reviewed periodically and, as adjustments become necessary, they are recorded in the financial statements in the year they become known.
q) Asset Retirement Obligations
Liabilities are recognized for statutory, contractual or legal obligations, when incurred, associated with the retirement of tangible capital assets when those obligations result from the acquisition, construction, development or normal operation of the assets. The obligations are measured initially at fair value, determined using present value methodology, and the resulting costs capitalized into the carrying amount of the related asset. In subsequent periods, the liability is adjusted for the accretion of discount and any changes in the amount or timing of the underlying future cash flows. The capitalized asset retirement cost is depreciated on the same basis as the related asset and the discount accretion is included in determining the results of operations.
3. Parliamentary Appropriations
NRC receives most of its funding through annual Parliamentary appropriations. Items recognized in the Statement of Operations and the Statement of Financial Position in one year may be funded through Parliamentary appropriations in prior, current or future years. Accordingly, NRC has different net results of operations for the year on a government funding basis than on an accrual accounting basis. The differences are reconciled in the following tables:
a) Reconciliation of net cost of operations to current year appropriations used |
|||
---|---|---|---|
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
|
|
|
|
Net Cost of Operations |
698,458 |
|
676,498 |
|
|
|
|
Adjustments for items affecting net cost of operations but not affecting appropriations: |
|
|
|
Revenues |
154,530 |
|
170,157 |
Amortization of capital assets |
(66,555) |
|
(64,210) |
Financial arrangements with other Federal Government departments and agencies |
(46,617) |
|
(56,974) |
Services received without charge (Note 15) |
(25,133) |
|
(27,612) |
Specified purpose accounts expenses |
(14,009) |
|
(15,131) |
Decrease (increase) in salary accrual |
5,527 |
|
(5,527) |
Refunds of previous year's expenditures |
3,488 |
|
3,540 |
Decrease in payment‑in‑lieu of taxes accrual |
2,623 |
|
371 |
Increase in employee future benefits |
(2,336) |
|
(3,519) |
Cost of goods sold |
(650) |
|
(745) |
Loss on disposal of capital assets |
(597) |
|
- |
Write‑off of inventory |
(551) |
|
(870) |
Increase in vacation pay and compensatory leave |
(359) |
|
(2,805) |
Decrease (increase) in litigation claim expense accrual |
261 |
|
(1,012) |
Decrease in environmental liabilities |
200 |
|
- |
Bad debts recovery (expense) |
95 |
|
(784) |
Expenses related to Justice Canada |
- |
|
(541) |
Other |
1,078 |
|
2,303 |
Total items affecting net cost of operations but not affecting appropriations |
10,995 |
|
(3,359) |
|
|
|
|
Adjustments for items not affecting net cost of operations but affecting appropriations: |
|
|
|
Acquisitions of capital assets and additions to assets under construction |
59,824 |
|
60,871 |
Inventory purchases |
990 |
|
794 |
Increase in prepaid expenses |
884 |
|
7,280 |
Total items not affecting net cost of operations but affecting appropriations |
61,698 |
|
68,945 |
|
|
|
|
Current year appropriations used |
771,151 |
|
742,084 |
b) Reconciliation of Parliamentary appropriations provided to current year appropriations used |
|||
---|---|---|---|
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
|
|
|
|
Parliamentary appropriations provided: |
|
|
|
Vote 55 – Operating expenditures |
445,422 |
|
460,203 |
Vote 60 – Capital expenditures |
47,185 |
|
49,943 |
Vote 65 – Grants and contributions |
152,124 |
|
145,858 |
Statutory amounts: |
|
|
|
Revenues pursuant to paragraph 5(1)(e) of the National Research Council Act |
162,748 |
|
133,706 |
Contributions to employee benefit plans |
57,684 |
|
54,647 |
Proceeds from the disposal of surplus Crown assets |
656 |
|
335 |
Collection agency fees |
48 |
|
51 |
Less: |
|
|
|
Revenues available for use in subsequent years |
(66,118) |
|
(78,168) |
Lapsed appropriations |
(28,598) |
|
(24,491) |
Current year appropriations used |
771,151 |
|
742,084 |
c) Reconciliation of net cash provided by Government to current year appropriations used |
|||
---|---|---|---|
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
|
|
|
|
Net cash provided by government |
673,127 |
|
655,005 |
|
|
|
|
Adjustments for items not affecting appropriations: |
|
|
|
Revenues |
154,530 |
|
170,157 |
Expenditures |
(50,074) |
|
(31,978) |
Increase in accounts receivable and advances |
(484) |
|
(5,791) |
Increase in endowment fund investments |
(118) |
|
(115) |
Decrease in inventory |
1,201 |
|
1,615 |
Increase in capital assets |
(1,115) |
|
(59,301) |
(Decrease) increase in liabilities |
(5,916) |
|
12,492 |
Total items not affecting appropriations |
98,024 |
|
87,079 |
|
|
|
|
Current year appropriations used |
771,151 |
|
742,084 |
4. Accounts Receivable and Advances
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
Accounts receivable from external parties |
20,869 |
|
19,612 |
Accounts receivable from other Federal Government departments and agencies |
5,898 |
|
5,846 |
Employee advances |
51 |
|
48 |
|
26,818 |
|
25,506 |
Less: allowance for doubtful accounts on external accounts receivable |
(1,147) |
|
(2,180) |
|
25,671 |
|
23,326 |
|
|
|
|
Repayable contributions |
9,944 |
|
10,659 |
Less: allowance for uncollectibility |
(8,251) |
|
(7,105) |
Net repayable contributions |
1,693 |
|
3,554 |
|
|
|
|
Total |
27,364 |
|
26,880 |
5. Equity Investments
Equity investments include shares in publicly and privately held companies. It is not management’s intention to hold equity investments over the long‑term. NRC will consider timely opportunities for divestiture of equity investments by taking into account the interests, market liquidity and expected future growth of the company. Of all portfolio investments where NRC holds an equity position, six were for debt settlements for a total value of $684,168 (six valued at $644,839 in 2007) and eighteen were obtained by non‑monetary transactions (twenty in 2007), of which nine (eight in 2007) are inactive or have filed for bankruptcy. Estimates of the non‑monetary transactions cannot be determined, as the value of the financial assistance is highly speculative.
The fair value of the equity investments as at March 31, 2008 was $4,014,877 ($757,292 in 2007).
6. Endowment Fund Investments
This account was established pursuant to paragraph 5(1)(f) of the National Research Council Act to record the residue of the estate of the late H.L. Holmes. Up to two thirds of the endowment fund's yearly net income is used to finance the H.L. Holmes award on an annual basis. The award provides the opportunity to post‑doctoral students to study at world famous graduate schools or research institutes under outstanding researchers.
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
Restricted cash and investments, beginning of year |
4,192 |
|
4,077 |
Net income from endowment |
209 |
|
208 |
Awards granted |
(91) |
|
(93) |
Restricted cash and investments, end of year |
4,310 |
|
4,192 |
The portfolio had an average effective return of 4.71% (5.02% in 2007) and an average term to maturity of 5.24 years as at March 31, 2008 (5.07 years as at March 31, 2007). The fair value of the endowment investments as at March 31, 2008 was $4,460,397 ($4,261,721 in 2007).
7. Capital Assets
(in thousands of dollars) |
Cost |
|
||
---|---|---|---|---|
Capital asset class |
Opening balance |
Acquisitions |
Transfers, disposals and write‑offs |
Closing balance |
Land |
10,972 |
- |
- |
10,972 |
Buildings and facilities |
614,786 |
7,843 |
770 |
623,399 |
Works and infrastructure |
20,185 |
85 |
- |
20,270 |
Machinery, equipment and furniture |
472,547 |
25,291 |
(13,822) |
484,016 |
Informatics equipment |
68,765 |
4,301 |
(4,227) |
68,839 |
Informatics software |
17,322 |
783 |
(2) |
18,103 |
Vehicles |
2,786 |
417 |
(198) |
3,005 |
Aircraft |
10,763 |
483 |
- |
11,246 |
Leasehold improvements |
10,474 |
742 |
997 |
12,213 |
Assets under construction |
10,562 |
20,994 |
(3,815) |
27,741 |
Leased capital assets |
68,100 |
- |
- |
68,100 |
Total |
1,307,262 |
60,939 |
(20,297) |
1,347,904 |
7. Capital Assets - Continued
Accumulated amortization |
|
|
|
||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Opening balance |
Amortization |
Transfers, disposals and write‑offs |
Closing balance |
|
2008 Net book value |
2007 Net book value |
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
|
10,972 |
10,972 |
|
(317,118) |
(23,564) |
(2) |
(340,684) |
|
282,715 |
297,668 |
|
(12,153) |
(726) |
- |
(12,879) |
|
7,391 |
8,032 |
|
(296,859) |
(30,247) |
15,546 |
(311,560) |
|
172,456 |
175,688 |
|
(54,518) |
(5,021) |
4,531 |
(55,008) |
|
13,831 |
14,247 |
|
(6,880) |
(3,339) |
24 |
(10,195) |
|
7,908 |
10,442 |
|
(2,067) |
(247) |
186 |
(2,128) |
|
877 |
719 |
|
(9,074) |
(237) |
- |
(9,311) |
|
1,935 |
1,689 |
|
(1,676) |
(450) |
(13) |
(2,139) |
|
10,074 |
8,798 |
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
|
27,741 |
10,562 |
|
(5,554) |
(2,724) |
- |
(8,278) |
|
59,822 |
62,546 |
|
(705,899) |
(66,555) |
20,272 |
(752,182) |
|
595,722 |
601,363 |
Amortization expense for the year ended March 31, 2008 is $66,554,738 ($64,209,615 in 2007).
At March 31, 2008, NRC held eight land lease agreements (eight in 2007) for a nominal annual cost of one dollar with universities. In these instances, NRC owns the building on the leased land. The fair value of the land for these non‑monetary transactions cannot be determined.
On March 21, 1996, NRC entered into a non‑monetary transaction. NRC entered into a lease agreement with the University of Western Ontario for the relocation of the Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute (IMTI) whereby leased property was provided to NRC for twenty‑five years at a nominal cost of one dollar. NRC has no obligations to the University of Western Ontario other than the relocation of the institute. The property was recorded as a leased capital asset at its fair value of $10,000,000. The annual amortization of $400,000 for the capital asset is exactly offset by the amortization of the deferred contribution related to the leased property.
On May 23, 2006, NRC took possession of a new facility and entered into a non‑monetary transaction with the University of Alberta. NRC entered into a lease agreement with the University for the housing of NRC’s National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT), whereby leased property is provided to NRC at a nominal cost of one dollar per year. The lease provides a one year term with options to renew on ten sequential occasions, each of the first nine renewals to be for a period of five years and the tenth renewal for a period of four years. The building was recorded as a leased capital asset at its fair value of $44,400,000. The annual amortization of $1,776,000 for the capital asset is exactly offset by the amortization of the deferred contribution related to the leased building.
On September 1, 2006, NRC took possession of a new facility and entered into a non‑monetary transaction with the University of Prince Edward Island. NRC entered into a lease agreement with the University for the housing of NRC’s Institute for Nutrisciences and Health (INH), whereby leased property was provided to NRC at a nominal cost of one dollar per year. The lease provides a nineteen month term with renewal options for seven additional periods of five years, and one additional period of three years and five months (to August 31, 2046). The building was recorded as a leased capital asset at its fair value of $13,700,000. The annual amortization of $548,000 for the capital asset is exactly offset by the amortization of the deferred contribution related to the leased building.
8. Accounts Payable and Accrued Liabilities
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
Suppliers |
99,504 |
|
102,188 |
Payable to other Federal Government departments and agencies |
14,935 |
|
14,017 |
Accrued salaries, wages and employee benefits |
11,423 |
|
13,773 |
Contractor holdbacks |
1,849 |
|
745 |
Sales tax payable |
66 |
|
130 |
Total |
127,777 |
|
130,853 |
9. Deferred Revenue
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
Deferred revenue – contributions related to leased capital assets |
|
|
|
Balance, beginning of year |
62,546 |
|
6,600 |
Contributions received |
- |
|
58,100 |
Contributions recognized as revenue |
(2,724) |
|
(2,154) |
Balance, end of year |
59,822 |
|
62,546 |
|
|
|
|
Deferred revenue ‑ specified purpose accounts |
|
|
|
Balance, beginning of year |
13,093 |
|
12,596 |
Funds received |
16,877 |
|
17,679 |
Revenue recognized |
(15,466) |
|
(17,182) |
Balance, end of year |
14,504 |
|
13,093 |
|
|
|
|
Deferred revenue ‑ other |
|
|
|
Balance, beginning of year |
9,195 |
|
23,598 |
Funds received |
6,724 |
|
9,129 |
Revenue recognized |
(8,999) |
|
(23,532) |
Balance, end of year |
6,920 |
|
9,195 |
|
|
|
|
Total |
81,246 |
|
84,834 |
10. Employee Future Benefits
Employees of NRC are entitled to specific benefits on or after termination or retirement, as provided for under various collective agreements or conditions of employment.
a) Pension benefits
NRC and all eligible employees participate in the Public Service Pension Plan, which is sponsored and administered by the Government of Canada. Pension benefits accrue up to a maximum of 35 years at a rate of two percent per year of pensionable service, times the average of the best five consecutive years of earnings. The benefits are integrated with Canada/Quebec Pension Plans benefits and they are indexed to inflation.
The expense amounts to $42,051,439 ($40,275,048 in 2007) which represents approximately 2.2 times (2.3 times in 2007) the contributions by employees. Both the employees and NRC contribute to the cost of the Plan. As at March 31, 2008, the contributions are as follows:
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
NRC’s contributions |
42,051 |
|
40,275 |
Employees’ contributions |
19,250 |
|
17,825 |
NRC’s responsibility with regard to the Plan is limited to its contributions. Actuarial surpluses or deficiencies are recognized in the financial statements of the Government of Canada, as the Plan’s sponsor.
b) Employee severance benefits
NRC provides severance benefits to its employees based on eligibility, years of service and final salary. These severance benefits are not pre‑funded. Benefits will be paid from future appropriations. Information about the severance benefits, measured as at March 31, is as follows:
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
Accrued benefit obligation, beginning of year |
58,788 |
|
55,269 |
Expense for the year |
7,603 |
|
7,180 |
Benefits paid during the year |
(5,267) |
|
(3,661) |
Accrued benefit obligation, end of year |
61,124 |
|
58,788 |
11. Contingent Liabilities
a) Environmental liabilities
Liabilities are accrued to record the estimated costs related to the management and remediation of contaminated sites where NRC is obligated or likely to be obligated to incur such costs. NRC has identified one site (one site in 2007) where such action is possible and for which a liability of $100,000 ($300,000 in 2007) has been recorded. NRC’s ongoing efforts to assess contaminated sites may result in additional environmental liabilities related to newly identified sites, or changes in the assessments or intended use of existing sites. These liabilities will be accrued by NRC in the year in which they become known.
b) Claims and litigation
Claims have been made against NRC in the normal course of operations. Some of these potential liabilities may become actual liabilities when one or more future events occur or fail to occur. To the extent that the future event is likely to occur, and a reasonable estimate of the loss can be made, an estimated liability is accrued and an expense recorded in NRC's financial statements.
As at March 31, 2008, NRC had thirteen claims (thirteen in 2007) outstanding of which two (three in 2007) related to pending charges that will likely result in a liability and two where the outcome is undeterminable (two in 2007). The two claims that will likely result in a liability can be reasonably estimated (three in 2007). A total accrued liability of $1,289,136 ($1,550,000 in 2007) was recorded based on NRC's legal assessment of potential liability.
c) Asset Retirement Obligations
NRC has not recognized any asset retirement obligations in the financial statements. NRC’s legal obligations related to asset retirements are subject to several uncertainties and therefore fair values cannot be reasonably determined. Changes in these assumptions and uncertainties could materially affect NRC’s assets and liabilities as well as the resulting amortization and accretion expenses related to the asset retirement obligation.
NRC generally incurs the costs associated with the removal and disposal of asbestos and other designated substances located in NRC buildings during major renovations. The timing and scope of renovations which result in the removal of regulated substances cannot be reasonably estimated at this time. Consequently, the asset retirement obligations associated with the removal of asbestos and other designated substances within NRC’s premises have not been recognized in the financial statements.
12. Contractual Obligations
The nature of NRC’s activities can result in some large multi‑year contracts and obligations whereby NRC will be obligated to make future payments when the services/goods are received. Significant contractual obligations that can be reasonably estimated are summarized as follows:
(in thousands of dollars) |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
2013 and thereafter |
Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Transfer payments |
105,827 |
59,635 |
10,079 |
9,900 |
8,450 |
193,891 |
Operating contracts |
35,075 |
9,493 |
14,579 |
- |
- |
59,147 |
Total |
140,902 |
69,128 |
24,658 |
9,900 |
8,450 |
253,038 |
13. Expenses
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
Salaries and employee future benefits |
418,453 |
|
419,566 |
Grants and contributions |
142,497 |
|
142,963 |
Utilities, materials and supplies |
89,331 |
|
81,026 |
Amortization |
66,555 |
|
64,210 |
Professional and special services |
58,018 |
|
60,111 |
Transportation and communication |
28,061 |
|
27,127 |
Repairs and maintenance |
18,293 |
|
18,180 |
Payments in lieu of taxes |
11,977 |
|
13,649 |
Bad debts |
6,390 |
|
3,658 |
Information |
4,741 |
|
5,377 |
Rentals |
4,214 |
|
5,244 |
Awards |
3,153 |
|
1,707 |
Cost of goods sold |
650 |
|
745 |
Net loss on disposal of capital assets |
597 |
|
- |
Other |
58 |
|
3,092 |
Total |
852,988 |
|
846,655 |
14. Revenues
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
Sales of goods and services |
|
|
|
Services of non‑regulatory nature and other fees and charges |
62,900 |
|
64,995 |
Sales of goods and information products |
11,814 |
|
11,349 |
Rights and privileges |
9,471 |
|
6,663 |
Lease and use of property |
4,303 |
|
3,221 |
|
88,488 |
|
86,228 |
|
|
|
|
Financial arrangements with other Federal Government departments and agencies |
46,620 |
|
56,974 |
Revenues from joint project and cost sharing agreements |
15,466 |
|
17,182 |
Lease inducement revenue |
2,724 |
|
2,154 |
Donations and bequests |
621 |
|
- |
Other |
611 |
|
573 |
Gain on sale of equity investment |
- |
|
223 |
Net gain on disposal of capital assets |
- |
|
6,823 |
Total |
154,530 |
|
170,157 |
15. Related Party Transactions
NRC is related as a result of common ownership to all Government of Canada departments, agencies, and Crown corporations. NRC enters into transactions with these entities in the normal course of business and on normal trade terms. Refer to Note 4 and Note 8 for receivable and payable to other Federal Government departments and agencies. Also, during the year, NRC received services, which were obtained without charge from other Federal Government departments and agencies. These services without charge have been recognized in NRC’s Statement of Operations as follows:
(in thousands of dollars) |
2008 |
|
2007 |
---|---|---|---|
Employer’s contributions to the health and dental insurance plans provided by Treasury Board |
23,706 |
|
25,786 |
Audit services provided by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada |
441 |
|
500 |
Legal services provided by Justice Canada |
360 |
|
635 |
Workers’ compensation benefits provided by Human Resources and Social Development Canada |
310 |
|
360 |
Payroll services provided by Public Works and Government Services Canada |
167 |
|
174 |
Accommodation provided by Public Works and Government Services Canada |
149 |
|
157 |
Total |
25,133 |
|
27,612 |
The total of legal services provided by Justice Canada amounts to $1,154,030 ($1,176,429 in 2007). Of this amount, $360,143 ($635,462 in 2007) was provided without charge. The total of accommodation provided by Public Works and Government Services Canada amounts to $321,080 ($322,318 in 2007). Of this amount, $149,298 ($156,876 in 2007) was provided without charge. The total of Workers’ compensation benefits provided by Human Resources and Social Development Canada amounts to $834,813 ($690,606 in 2007). Of this amount, $309,838 ($360,188 in 2007) was provided without charge.
16. Financial Instruments
NRC’s financial instruments consist of accounts receivable and advances, investments, accounts payable and accrued liabilities, and deferred revenue. Unless otherwise noted, it is management’s opinion that NRC is not exposed to significant interest, currency or credit risk arising from these financial instruments. Unless otherwise disclosed in these financial statements, management estimates that the carrying values of the financial instruments approximate their fair value due to their impending maturity.
17. Comparative Information
Comparative figures have been reclassified to conform to the current year's presentation.
NRC Mandate
Under the National Research Council Act, NRC is responsible for:
Consult http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/n-15/87335.html for more details about NRC’s legislative framework.
NRC Accountability Framework
NRC reports directly to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Industry. NRC works in partnership with the members of the Industry Portfolio to leverage complementary resources and exploit synergies in areas such as innovation of firms through S&T, SMEs and economic growth of Canadian communities. The NRC Council provides strategic direction and advice to the President and reviews organizational performance. The President is the leader, responsible for fulfilling corporate strategies and delivering results. Five Vice Presidents (Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, Technology and Industry Support and Corporate Services) are responsible for a portfolio of research institutes, programs and centres. Figure 4-1 provides an overview of NRC’s organization.
Figure 4-1: NRC Organizational Chart
Highly qualified professionals (scientists, engineers, technicians and others) in conjunction with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment are prerequisites to performing at the leading-edge of R&D. NRC faced challenges in sustaining these key resources and continued to focus on strategies to address these challenges.
Implementing NRC’s Strategy: Science at Work for Canada and advancing the federal S&T Strategy: Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage
Corporate business plan – NRC established its corporate business plan in the first quarter of 2007-08. This business plan reflects key commitments and decisions of the NRC Senior Executive Committee and sets organizational direction for three fiscal years (2007-08 to 2009-10). The plan puts forward an approach for helping to enhance the financial flexibility of NRC, while ensuring financial and non-financial resources fully align in support of priority NRC programs. It also outlines the steps NRC is taking to implement new horizontal R&D initiatives focused on key industrial and social issues for Canada. Heightened collaboration with the private, public and academic sectors is a key theme throughout the document. The corporate business plan will be updated on an annual basis to reflect changing internal and external factors, as well as the ongoing decisions and priorities of both the federal government and the NRC senior executive.
An integrated solution to planning, risk and performance management – In support of the federal S&T strategy modern approach to management, NRC began the implementation of an integrated management framework in 2007-08 for providing senior management and NRC Institutes, Branches and Programs (I/B/Ps) with the planning and performance information they need to support integrated decision-making, resource allocation and functional planning (human resources, capital assets and finance). This cross-functional change initiative is responsible for embedding modern management processes and systems for the integrated framework and has a mandate until April 2010. In addition to the integrated corporate business plan, NRC developed a performance measurement framework aligned with its strategy as well as business plans from each of its I/B/Ps. The integrated planning effort supported internal management decision-making and contributed to delivering a fully populated Program Activity Architecture to the Treasury Board Secretariat.
Understanding the impact of federally performed S&T – In 2007-08, NRC participated actively with the Policy Research Initiative (PRI) aimed at improving the government’s understanding of the impact of federally performed S&T. NRC has taken the lead on a study to determine the best practices for measuring S&T impacts on behalf of PRI to address the S&T strategy policy commitment of increasing accountability to Canadians.
Strategies for sustainable resources – Faced with ongoing resource pressures, NRC is making more strategic choices regarding the use of resources. In 2007-08, this included:
|
2007-08 |
2006-07 |
2005-06 |
---|---|---|---|
|
(percentage) |
||
Total Turnover |
11.38 |
11.39 |
10.75 |
Total Continuing Turnover |
4.52 |
3.36 |
3.16 |
(Total turnover includes end of term and short term positions, i.e., was anticipated.)
Designated Group |
Representation |
Availability* |
Difference |
||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
number |
percentage |
number |
percentage |
number |
|
Women |
1,552 |
35.4% |
1578 |
36.0 |
-26 |
Aboriginal peoples |
47 |
1.1% |
57 |
1.3% |
-10 |
Persons with disabilities |
178 |
4.1% |
177 |
4.0% |
+1 |
Visible minorities |
701 |
16.0% |
637 |
14.6% |
+64 |
|
|
||||
Total workforce |
4,378 |
*Source: 2001 Census and 2001 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS)
9 - salaried employees, as of 31 March 2008
|
|
The activities outlined above as part of NRC’s strategy implementation initiatives will help address Management Accountability Framework commitments.
Implement Action Plan on recommendations of the Auditor General of Canada–Overall, NRC has made very positive progress in implementing the OAG’s recommendations and is actively addressing the recommendations provided in the OAG’s February 2007 Status Report. Related accomplishments include:
Work still requiring progress includes recommendations pertaining to the collection and reporting of performance data and project management. However, significant activity has been taken toward addressing them.
Senior Management and Corporate information
President |
Secretary General |
Vice-President Life Sciences |
Vice-President Technology and Industry Support |
Vice-President Physical Sciences |
Vice-President Corporate Services |
Vice-President Engineering |
General Inquiries: |
Corporate Headquarters |
DPR Contact: |
Access to Information and Privacy: |
|
Research and Development
Biotechnology Research Institute – Montreal, QC
Director General: Michel Desrochers
General Inquiries: 514-496-6100 http://www.bri-irb.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/
Institute for Biodiagnostics – Winnipeg, MB
Director General: Ian Smith
General Inquiries: 204-983-7692 http://www.ibd.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/
Institute for Biological Sciences – Ottawa, ON
Director General: Jim Richards
General Inquiries: 613-993-5812 http://ibs-isb.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Institute for Marine Biosciences– Halifax, NS
Director General: Joan Kean-Howie
General Inquiries: 902-426-8332 http://imb-ibm.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Plant Biotechnology Institute– Saskatoon, SK
Director General: Jerome Konecsni
General Inquiries: 306-975-5575 http://pbi-ibp.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/
Under the Direction of the Vice-President Physical Sciences
Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics– Victoria and Penticton, BC
Director General: Gregory Fahlman
General Inquiries: 250-363-0001 http://hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Institute for Chemical Process and Environmental Technology– Ottawa, ON
Director General: Janusz Lusztyk
General Inquiries: 613- 993-4041 http://icpet-itpce.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Institute for Information Technology – Ottawa, ON, Gatineau, QC, Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John, NB
Director General: Christian Couturier
General Inquiries: 506-444-6132 http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Institute for Microstructural Sciences – Ottawa, ON
Director General: Marie D’Iorio
General Inquiries: 613-993-4583 http://ims-ism.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Institute for National Measurement Standards – Ottawa, ON
Director General: Jim McLaren
General Inquiries: 613-998-7018 http://inms-ienm.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
National Institute for Nanotechnology – Edmonton, AB
Director General: Nils Petersen
General Inquiries: 780-492-8888 http://nint-innt.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences – Ottawa and Chalk River, ON
Director General: Danial Wayner
General Inquiries: 613-991-5419 http://steacie.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Under the Direction of the Vice-President Engineering
Institute for Aerospace Research – Ottawa, ON and Montreal, QC
Director General: Jerzy Komorowski
General Inquiries: 613-993-5738 http://iar-ira.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation – Vancouver, BC
Director General: Maja Veljkovic
General Inquiries: 604-221-3099 http://ifci-iipac.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Industrial Materials Institute – Boucherville and Saguenay, QC
Director General: Blaise Champagne
General Inquiries: 450-641-5000 http://www.imi.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Institute for Ocean Technology – St. John’s, NL
Director General: Mary Williams
General Inquiries: 709-772-6001 http://iot-ito.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Institute for Research in Construction – Ottawa, ON and Regina, SK
Director General: Bob Bowen
General Inquiries: 613-993-2607 http://irc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Canadian Hydraulics Centre – Ottawa, ON
Executive Director: John Coleman
General Inquiries: 613-993-2417 http://chc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Centre for Surface Transportation Technology – Ottawa, ON
General Manager: Paul Treboutat
General Inquiries: 613-998-9365 http://cstt-ctts.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Technology and Industry Support
Under the Direction of the Vice-President Technology and Industry Support
Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information – Ottawa, ON with offices across Canada
Director General: Pam Bjornson
General Inquiries: 1-800-668-1222 http://cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Industrial Research Assistance Program – Ottawa, ON with offices across Canada
Director General: Tony Rahilly
General Inquiries: 1-877-994-4727 http://irap-pari.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Corporate Services
Administrative Services and Property Management Branch
Director General: Jerry Rogers
General Inquiries: 613-993-2440
jerry.rogers@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Information Management Services Branch
Director General: Shane Brunas
General Inquiries: 613-991-3773
shane.brunas@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Strategy and Development Branch
Director General: Rob James
General Inquiries: 613-990-7381
rob.james@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Branches and Offices Reporting to the President
Executive Offices and Secretary General
Secretary General: Marielle Piché
General Inquiries: 613-998-4579
marielle.piche@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Finance Branch
Chief Financial Officer: Daniel Gosselin
General Inquiries: 613-990-7471
daniel.gosselin@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Human Resources Branch
Director General (Acting): Isabelle Gingras
General Inquiries: 613-993-9136
isabelle.gingras@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
NRC Internal Audit
Director: Jayne Hinchliff-Milne
General Inquiries: 613-949-7689
jayne.hinchliff-milne@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
NRC Legal Services
Director: Louis Robayo
General Inquiries: 613-993-0035
louis.robayo@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
NRC Council Members
Pierre Coulombe |
Douglas MacArthur |
Dennis Anderson |
Eva Mah Borsato |
Patricia Béretta |
Gilles Patry |
Louis Brunel |
Alan Pelman |
Paul Clark |
Barbara Stanley |
Delwyn Fredlund |
Howard Tennant |
Peter Frise |
Normand Tremblay |
John Harker |
Allan Warrack |
Margaret Lefebvre |
David Wood |
Kellie Leitch |
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