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Canada is preoccupied with detailed reports such as the current Naylor report, and the prior Naylor report submitted to the previous government and entitled Unleashing Innovation: Excellent Health Care for Canada. These are detailed and scholarly, with recommendations that would transform Canada and assure a legacy of strength in STEM for innovation in all fields. But the well-known saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results” may regrettably apply to the second Naylor report, as the result of the first report was that it was buried.

The doom and gloom for Canada’s efforts in research may be contrasted with our U.S. neighbours. Despite far more political acrimony and dispute south of our border, the U.S. National Institutes of Health has received funding increases last year and again recently. These now total increases of $4 billion U.S. over two years. U.S. news programs have featured a litany of politicians from both parties heralding this increased funding as a fundamental value.

In Canada, our own Canadian Institutes of Health Research has remained stagnant in its funding at about $1 billion Cdn in total. About 5o per cent of this funding goes to discovery research but prior commitments have led to the current impasse.

Several Canadian scientists are disappointingly considering that the second Naylor report may suffer the fate of the first. The funding crisis in the Canadian Institutes for Health Research may need to be considered for an emergency rescue – just as we would if a vessel were sinking with 100 passengers in the turbulent waters below the Chaudière Bridge.

John Bergeron is Emeritus Robert Reford Professor in the Department of Medicine, McGill University.