Federal Scientific Activities

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Science, Innovation and Electronic Information Division (SIEID),
Science and Technology Surveys Section

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The Federal Government is a principal funder of science and technology in Canada.  This report presents information on the disposition of monies and human resources for science and technology (S&T) by federal departments and agencies.  The information has been assembled to serve as a reference document for program managers, government officials, the media and the general public. It records the allocation of S&T resources for the last five years.

The statistics are collected through the survey of S&T activities of federal departments and agencies, which records past, current and proposed expenditures for activities in the natural and social sciences. The survey is designed to correspond as much as possible to the system of budgetary estimates used by the federal government. This is done to ease the response burden, assist in editing and, most importantly, to produce comparable data for policy planning and program evaluation. Thus, the questionnaire covers the same time span as the Estimates including: proposed estimates for the fiscal year, e.g. 2006/2007; forecast expenditures for the current fiscal year, e.g. 2005/2006, and actual expenditures for the past fiscal year, e.g. 2004/2005 (as also reported in the Public Accounts).

Over 65 different Federal Government departments and agencies either perform science and technology (S&T) activities or have a budgetary allocation to fund S&T.  In addition to the expenditures attributable to program budgets, there are additional costs attributable to scientific activities which must be included if a full picture of the resources devoted to science activities is to be obtained. These include other sources of funds and other S&T costs which are defined below:

• Transfers into the program from other federal government departments and agencies, net of transfers out.

• Income from external sources such as industry and provincial governments.

• Other S&T costs:  Non-Program Costs (indirect costs) are costs that are not part of the budgets of scientific programs and include services provided by other departments, such as:

• accommodation by Public Works and Government Services Canada and own department;
• employer's share of health and employment insurance premiums paid by Treasury Board;
• employee compensation under Workers Compensation Acts paid by Human Resources Development Canada;
• cost of legal services provided by the Department of Justice;
• cheques issue cost by Public Works and Government Services Canada;

Indirect costs are included in departmental totals; however, these costs have not been included in expenditures classified by socio-economic objective.

According to international convention, science and technology activities are divided into two fields; natural sciences and engineering (NSE) and social sciences and humanities (SSH). These fields of science are further divided into research and development (R&D) and related scientific activities (RSA). The Federal Government may choose to perform S&T in its own laboratories (intramural expenditures) or may pay another organization to perform S&T (extramural expenditures). Data are presented in this report on S&T activities funded by the Federal Government for R&D and RSA and distinguished by performer (that is, intramurally by the Government itself or extramurally, by business enterprises (industry), universities, provincial and municipal governments, private non-profit organizations, other Canadian performers and foreign performers). Definitions of these terms are provided in the Technical Notes section. Crown corporations which have an industrial function are not included.  They are treated as commercial enterprises and the crown corporation expenditures in aggregate are included in the Statistics Canada report, Industrial Research and Development, Catalogue No. 88‑202-XIE.

Considerable effort has been expended to maintain the continuity and compatibility of the data series to permit analysis and study of the impact of scientific activities. Efforts of the departments and agencies in ensuring accurate and complete information are gratefully acknowledged.

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