Funding to be diverted from pure science

The National Research Council is planning to divert funds away from "curiosity" based research towards a handful of "poster child" projects of more practical importance. "Flagship programs will be the NRC poster children -- there will never be a lot of flagships, but they are important because they are the way we will explain and demonstrate the sort of things we can do and the benefits we can provide for Canada," NRC president John McDougall wrote in an internal memo to his employees that was obtained by media. "They should be inspiring, large in scale and provide substantial public benefit." These projects include improving wheat farming productivity, research into bio-composite materials, absorbing carbon dioxide with algae, and printable electronics.