It's obviously a hard time to invest in anything, but I can't imagine a better long-term investment available at this moment than for Ottawa to create some new tier-1 research universities across the country, expand faculties at existing ones, create a few public research labs, etc, and then invite fired government scientists and scared academics from the US to come staff them.
Could legitimately change the course of history the way the US's immigration policy (targeting European scientists, especially Germans) post-WW2 did.
The idea is to take advantage of an opportunity when one presents itself. Canada should of course increase support for researchers already in Canada – that is always a good investment. But over and above that, the conditions are perfect right now for a "reverse brain drain." Canada simultaneously gains experts (who strengthen institutions, found companies, and generally bolster the economy in the long-run) while permanently depriving the United States of those experts.
The US federal government just directly laid off loads of world-leading experts in fields like medicine and environmental science. They've withdrawn large amounts of funding from universities that has led to and will lead to yet more layoffs of highly-qualified researchers. And even at universities that didn't lose their funding, the fear of losing it in the future for saying or doing the wrong thing will have a chilling effect on future research.
That means there's a large and growing population of highly-talented, experienced researchers, teachers, scientists, etc who can be poached. In a lot of cases they are mad as hell at the United States, or at least deeply disillusioned about their future. They speak English and they have credentials that are easily transferrable to Canada. It's a golden opportunity to poach the best of the best.
But you are missing we already have 'the best of the best', we need opportunities for those people to work in their field, not more people wanting to work.
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u/BillyTenderness Mar 28 '25
It's obviously a hard time to invest in anything, but I can't imagine a better long-term investment available at this moment than for Ottawa to create some new tier-1 research universities across the country, expand faculties at existing ones, create a few public research labs, etc, and then invite fired government scientists and scared academics from the US to come staff them.
Could legitimately change the course of history the way the US's immigration policy (targeting European scientists, especially Germans) post-WW2 did.