Enhancing Canada’s National-Scale Research Infrastructure

Summary

Canada's national-scale research infrastructure—its major facilities, platforms, networks, digital systems, and the people who run them—is a critical foundation for scientific discovery and innovation and helps attract and train talent. While this infrastructure is well-regarded internationally and produces excellent research, fragmented governance, planning, and funding limit its effectiveness.

Enhancing Canada's National-Scale Research Infrastructure explores how Canada can optimize its research infrastructure to meet current and future needs. A more coordinated approach could help Canada maximize impact, build long-term capacity, and compete in an increasingly knowledge-driven world.

This project was supported by the Government of Canada, through the Strategic Science Fund.

Key findings

A tailored approach grounded in Canada’s strengths could help the national-scale research infrastructure ecosystem address pressing challenges and opportunities, support international collaboration, and maintain long-term capacity and resilience.

• Canada lacks a national strategic framework for national-scale research infrastructure. Unlike many comparator countries, Canada does not have a portfolio-based approach grounded in broader science and technology priorities, landscape analyses, and roadmapping exercises. This complicates Canadian participation in international research infrastructure and creates barriers for foreign participation in Canadian facilities and networks.
• A portfolio approach to system-level governance could help Canada manage its national-scale research infrastructure as strategic assets in support of national priorities. System-level governance is fragmented across loosely connected actors, with no clear coordination mechanism (e.g., a capstone-like entity). Canada also lacks a coordination mechanism or role to represent and provide lead responsibility for its involvement in international research collaborations, resulting in missed opportunities for international partnerships and investments.
• The funding landscape for Canada’s national-scale research infrastructure is fragmented. Canada’s national-scale research infrastructure ecosystem is supported by a variety of established, diverse funding institutions and mechanisms, providing substantial investment and system resilience, but lacks consistent alignment across funding streams for capital, operations, access, adaptation, and decommissioning. There is also no dedicated mechanism to support access to international research infrastructure.
• Digital research infrastructure is foundational. Digital research infrastructure (DRI) now leads, informs, and shapes research by providing connectivity, computing resources, research software, platforms, and data management. Despite recent initiatives, Canada’s national-scale DRI faces challenges that limit the country’s ability to conduct timely research and meet growing demand. Among the most pressing challenges is the continuation of funding support for DRI as discrete projects.
• Optimizing research infrastructure includes a system-level impact framework. A consistent framework could help Canada assess national-scale research infrastructure more effectively and support evidence-based decision-making across the full lifecycle of these assets. A comprehensive understanding of impact will also help to capture scientific, social, economic, policy, innovation, training, and ecosystem effects.
• Other critical aspects of national-scale research infrastructure include:
  • Talent. Optimizing national-scale research infrastructure entails supporting the people who design, manage, and operate it.
  • Sovereignty. Canada’s sovereignty objectives could be incorporated into planning and funding.
  • Open science. Open science enables the optimization of research infrastructure by making facilities, data, and tools broadly accessible and reusable.
  • Northern research infrastructure. Optimizing northern infrastructure presents a significant opportunity to strengthen Canada’s leadership in Arctic, ocean, and climate research, while addressing challenges related to geopolitics, climate impacts, high logistics costs, and fragmented coordination.
  • Research in French. Canada’s bilingual research capacity is a strategic lever for optimizing national-scale RI, enhancing visibility, strengthening Francophone communities, and advancing international engagement through science diplomacy.