Ahead of the Federal Budget next week, I thought I would contribute to the online discussion about the Canadian research environment. For example, from 2000-2019 Canada was only the G7 country that experienced a decrease in research funding as a percentage of GDP.

OECD Chart: Gross domestic spending on R&D, Total, % of GDP, Annual, 2000 – 2019 https://data.oecd.org/chart/6llp 

Similarly, from 2011 (coincidentally when I started grad. school) to 2019, Canada's experienced a decrease in researchers per 1000 https://data.oecd.org/chart/6llv 

Despite Canada having similar or better science performance in student's at age 15. https://data.oecd.org/chart/6llx 

It's not uncommon in my field to meet many great Canadian scientists seeking employment abroad and this is evident in the biotech field as highlighted recently by @globeandmail https://tinyurl.com/vxr9fbu 

@cafreeland @ScienceMin @FinanceCanada Please continue to increase your support for our scientific community in #Budget2021 @CIHR_IRSC @NSERC_CRSNG @SSHRC_CRSH

For those interested here is a great resource with many more details on the above graphs and the lagging research funding support in Canada from the Canadian Association for Neuroscience @CAN_ACN - https://can-acn.org/science-funding-in-canada-statistics/