The federal Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) hands out millions of dollars to universities. The problem is that CFI is not accountable to the public for its spending because it not subject to federal Access to Information legislation. In her new capacity as chair of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) Bonnie Patterson makes a plug to all political parties for more of the same. Having gussied up campuses, built corporate-friendly research facilities and embarked on branding campaigns, universities need funds for things like, well, teaching and basic research. Ah heck, what does it matter that earlier this year foundations like CFI were slammed by the Auditor General for being unaccountable for billions of taxpayer dollars - they still have cash to hand out! On the other hand when "the Auditor-General worries, Canadians have cause to worry."

An apt summary of the Patterson's AUCC press release was posted by uwatch.ca today:

A routine Association of Colleges and Universities' election-time survey of the party leaders' commitment to PSE funding was taken as an opportunity to plug Canada's least-transparent research funding body, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.

Of course, the fact that campuses across the country are now top-heavy with shiny new market-friendly corporate research facilities, while traditional basic research and classroom teaching goes begging, is in no small part thanks to the unbalanced stream of funds that has come from largely unaccountable foundations such as the CFI, but that doesn't stop new AUCC president Bonnie Patterson of Trent from making a pitch for more of the same in the last paragraph of the news release.

When Ontario universities become subject to provincial Freedom of Information legislation (possibly as soon as June 2006) we wonder if universities will be forced to reveal how much they received from CFI, what the terms and conditions might have been, if those terms were met, and exactly how the money was spent. We might even find out how Trent University managed to get CFI funding for the DNA cluster without a business plan and what its plans for the cluster actually are.