Category Archives: Economics

And now, the walkback

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Someone got a call from Industry Canada:

Researchers now pleased with budget.

The controversy continued to simmer yesterday, just as Genome Canada's board of directors issued a list of "key messages" that expressed overwhelming support for the budget. "Genome Canada is pleased with the federal government's 2009 budget in which millions will be invested in research infrastructure over the next two years," read the statement. "This is good news for the scientific community across the country."


While Genome Canada received no new funding in the 2009 budget, the board said it already has a pair of five-year funding arrangements in place with the federal government worth a total of $240-million and will be able to meet all its current funding obligations.


The organization has received $840-million in federal funding since its inception in 2000. Genome Canada received no mention in the Conservatives' first budget in 2006, but was given $100-million in new funding in 2007 and an additional $140-million last year.


No representative of Genome Canada was available yesterday to explain the group's apparent change in position on the budget, a spokeswoman said. Gary Goodyear, the Minister of State for Science and Technology, said the controversy stemmed from a "misunderstanding between a president and his board."

Genome Canada ignored in federal Budget

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The budget was alarmingly silent on the future of Genome Canada, Canada's core funding source for "big science".  Genome Canada has established Canadian leadership in a range of genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics global research initiatives. 

globeandmail.com: Budget erases funding for key science agency:

The only agency that regularly finances large-scale science in Canada was shut out of Tuesday's federal budget, putting at risk thousands of jobs and some of the most promising medical research, and forcing the country to pull out of key international projects.
For the first time in nine years, Genome Canada, a non-profit non-governmental funding organization, was not mentioned in the federal budget and saw its annual cash injection from Ottawa – $140-million last year – disappear.

Without minimizing the importance of Genome Canada and the value it brings to Canada's scientific community and the broader economy, I would note that the article sensationalizes the situation a wee bit.  Genome Canada was established and funded out of government surplus, and it's hardly a surprise the first deficit in 9 years would mean a break in funding.  Further, we are in year 2 of a 5 year funding program, so no one is losing a job any time soon.  This time next year the economy should be in recovery, and I expect that some restoration of GC funding will occur.  More worrying perhaps are provincial plans for their contributions to regional genome centres.  BC and Quebec for example of have been strongly supporting the growth of life sciences through investments in Genome BC and Genome Quebec.  While continued investment in science might not seem 'shovel ready', it keeps global scientific talent tied to local jobs and the local economy, and as Genome BC and others have shown, fosters the spin off of lab based research into private sector ventures.

Newsflash! The world is getting better!

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It rare to see such a powerful and accessible use of statistics.  In this video,  Hans Rosling traces the march of global health and wealth since the early 60’s.  There is lots of gold here – my favourite nugget is the tremendous progress made in Vietnam since the war, and generally the rise of Asia from poverty to middle income.  Also illuminating is the diversity within regions and countries in the developing world.  Watch it all.  Certainly underscores the link between the removal of trade barriers and the prosperity of poor nations.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

I’m ok with gas “gouging”

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A new study on gas prices by the  Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Gas Price Gouge: The Sequel) has generated a lot of news in Vancouver. Understandably so, as the report claims that we are ‘overpaying’ by 27 cents a litre here.  I haven’t read the report yet so I have no comment on the methods used or embedded assumptions, but I find myself resistant to the idea of ‘normal profit margins’. I really don’t have a problem with a company charging whatever it wants for its product, as long as there is no monopoly or collusion in play.  Oil companies seem to have discovered that consumers, despite war or disaster induced price hikes, are willing to pay more. So they are charging more.  How is this different from any other industry?  People make their own choices and if they want to commute alone in a gas guzzling vehicle, and want to pay a mint for it, so what?   Others make different choices:

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Gas price pains
appear to be driving people out of their cars. More people appear to be
turning to transit and car pooling. TransLink says overall transit use
was up 3% for the first quarter of the year, and up more than 11.5% on
West Coast Express. The big gas price hike happened in April, and
TransLink is still waiting for official ridership numbers for that time
period.

Leon Tuebes at the Jack Bell Foundation says there is also more
interest in van pooling, car pooling and ride sharing. "The biggest
surge we’ve seen is for people looking for other people to car pool
with them in their car, or to find someone willing to share a ride in
their private vehicles."

Tuebes believes once the price of gas hits a $1.30, there will be a
sudden spike in people looking for alternatives to single occupant car
use. He says at that price, even sharing one or two trips a week can
make a big difference. He says the number of hits on their car pooling
website has gone up 25% since February as people check out other ways
to get around.

Let the price of gas soar, says I.