Peterborough This Week put 10 questions about the controversial DNA Cluster Project to Bonnie Patterson and Denis Ferkany (Dec 29, 2004). Did they provide answers of any substance whatsoever, or just reiterate vacuous promotional hype? Judge for yourself.

With much talk, positive and negative, concerning the DNA Cluster Project, Peterborough This Week's Mike Lacey recently sat down with Trent University president Bonnie Patterson and Cluster Project president Denis Ferkany to ask them...

PTW : Where is the cluster project at right now?

Ferkany : The fact is the cluster itself is already here. That is the important thing. The cluster is built on partnerships that are already in place between (Sir Sandford) Fleming College, Trent University and the Ministry of Natural Resources. Current activities that are under way, in the cluster, are to find ways to take ways that are already there and to make commercialization activities happen. So the foundation is already there, it's in place...we're now putting together an organization that will help take the ideas and technology and put it into the commercial world.

PTW : Do you have a timeline on when private sector involvement will come into the project?

Ferkany : In order to fund the start-up of the organization, there was a private sector contribution that was made in order to actually put the organization in place, and to match up with the federal and provincial funds that we already have in place. So our next stage is to broaden the involvement of the business community at large right here in the Peterborough region.

PTW : What keeps coming up is the question of where are the private sector dollars in all of this? About $10 million has come by way of the federal and provincial governments while a further $2 million, over four years, has come from the City. Is there a point you can look to when you can go out and really bring private companies into this?

Ferkany : We're there already.

Patterson : The private involvement is around governance and leadership on the governance side. Secondly, hard, cold cash that has been put into the seed money activity and (it's) seed money that has supported the preliminary activity and that is important. There's also private sector support that is the matching component of the grants that we've secured. So, for example, Trent, from a federal program, secured a grant of $3.7 million. It was matched by the Province by $3.7 million. But on top of those two components we need to secure another $1.6 million, which is 20 per cent of that total program, which comes from private sector in-kind and public sector contributions.

PTW : In five, even 10 years down the road, what will the cluster project look like?

Ferkany : The whole goal of the cluster is to create jobs and new wealth in our region. That's the bottom line. That's the beginning and the end of it right there.

Patterson : And as we create high quality personnel in the region - through Fleming College's programs, through Trent University's programs and through our collaborative programs, such as the new forensics degree program - the idea will be to create an environment where those individuals don't feel they have to leave the community in order to, A, make a living and, B, make a contribution to the area (because) that opportunity is already here.

PTW : What are the direct benefits for the university out of all of this?

Patterson : We get the benefit of the latest state of (of the art) science equipment, the benefit of funded research that is supported. We get the benefit, in some cases, of equipment that may not be used to its maximum that they (companies) are quite happy to have us house and use. We get the benefit of their bringing their client base in to see what we're doing who have an interest in the kind of new innovations that are created. Some companies might well be interested in hiring our students. So there's a huge contribution to both the classroom and to the research enterprise.

PTW : Something that people in the university are concerned about is the use of the words like "commercialization," "corporate involve-ment"...the idea of taking research and putting it into use in the marketplace. And their argument is that a university exists for teaching and learning and not for making money. First, do you agree with that feeling and how do you balance the need for research and learning with the desire to put that into the marketplace?

Patterson : You need a whole series of mechanisms to make sure things are done properly. So you have ethical policies and guidelines used to guide research. You have committees that help establish, at the faculty level and institution level, intellectual property policies that ensure the inventor of the idea is protected. You build an intellectual property policy that recognizes that you're talking about multi-stakeholders involved in innovation and discovery and you reflect protection in those multi-stakeholder properties to ensure people are protected.

PTW : Something that perhaps excites people about the project, and is often brought up whenever the project is discussed, is the possibility of bringing thousands of new, high-paying jobs to the area, something like 2,500 direct jobs and 3,000 indirect jobs over the next 10 to 25 years. How accurate are those projections and when would the bulk of those jobs come here?

Ferkany : We're really talking about transformation of what happens here in our region. And (if) we think about the Trent-Severn Waterway, or we think about Peterborough before Trent University or Fleming College came here.

Ferkany : Another example is when General Electric came here a 100 years ago. Each one of those events were things that transformed our region. When you think about the cluster and the mission, it's in that same place. It's to transform our region. And those events each took both time and a big investment to make happen. So this undertaking is a substantial transition and transformation for our region. It's going to take time and investment. It's not going to happen overnight. It's not something where a 1,000 jobs are going to appear next year here in Peterborough. So we have a plan in place and Tom Phillips, one of the really respected persons...(he) is on the faculty at Fleming College and also taught here at Trent University. He has a Ph.D in economics. Tom did an economic impact statement and he studied four different businesses and the cluster activity itself, and his estimation was over a 20-year period of time that there could be thousands of jobs around those businesses.

PTW : While it seems to be more of a regional endeavor, there are some concerned about a possible industrial park at, or bordering, the university. How much development will take place at the university and what can we expect that development to look like?

Ferkany : This is a regional undertaking throughout the whole Peterborough region. And while there are opportunities to build new businesses and build a research park right in this area here, we are not talking about an industrial park development, with concerns about smokestacks and industrial...you know this is not that frame of reference. We're talking about the knowledge-based economy. We're talking about jobs that are involved in robotics and information technology, drug development, environmental technology development.

PTW : The longer term plan is to possibly build on the university's endowment land on Pioneer Road. What was that land originally intended for?

Patterson : To generate revenue for the university. It's endowment land. It's not nature areas, it's not core campus, but it's land the board said over 20 years ago that we have to think long-term of a partnership development that is going to drive some revenue to be able to reinvest into the university. Now, we're never going to do that, we're not business park developers, the City is. We want to enter a relationship with the City where they would see this as their next business park, clean business park or smart business park, in the life sciences, health sciences, bio-technology area. And we would be working with them. In fact, we might lease the land for 100 years -- of course this is all speculation -- to the City. The City then does the development.

PTW : What is the worst-case and best-case scenario for both the project and the university?

Ferkany : Well, (there is the) example of something like the Research Triangle Park in the Carolinas which has extraordinarily helped the three universities and the other communities are very healthy and vibrant. It's a wonderful place to live and work, and it's created billions of dollars of revenue for the area.

The worst case scenario would be we have an interesting project that creates a small number of jobs. That would be the worst case scenario. Something will come out of this, what it is a matter of how large it is -- scope and scale.

Patterson : The worst scenario for me is that we are in such a competitive environment for faculty that the 11 or 12 faculty members that we've attracted are here because they believe in Trent and they believe in this region as a place to work and live and do their high-end business -- (the worst case scenario is) that as we face a significant faculty shortage across the country, more competitive regions recruit them away from here and we lose the core expertise that is driving innovation, new development, experimentation, (the ability) to deliver the high-end forensics degree program. So if something happened in this competitive world that other institutions also have a high interest in DNA, if we had the MNR move to another part of the Province because -- their headquarters is here and that's important to the evolution of our faculty. We'd have a collapse on our side of being able to participate in the innovation agenda.