The “brain drain” of Canadians to the United States has usually been accepted as a given. The US is bigger, richer and proximate. The U.S. beckons if a Canadian wants to make more money, often a lot more; or become an astronaut, an entertainer, a media personality, or whatever. Academic researchers head south too, too, because budgets are bigger, university reputations are world-wide and elements of the private sector (see Silicon Valley technology companies) are always searching for brains.
Today, however, Canada has a unique opportunity to turn the “brain drain” into a “brain gain”, especially in science and medicine, courtesy of the Trump administration’s assault on the country’s most famous universities and research institutions. The results of this assault are decimated budgets, lost jobs and prominent researchers and brilliant graduate students looking for where to apply their talents.
How massive is the assault of the Trumpian Visigoths? The National Science Foundation is threatened with $12-billion in cuts. The National Science Foundation , a huge funder of scientific research at US. universities, is awarding grants at the slowest pace in 35 years. The National Institutes of Health, arguably the world’s leading institution supporting health research, faces cuts of up to $18-billion, of about 38 per cent of its budget. Direct grants to prestigious universities for scientific reach have been cut. For example, the Trump administration has announced that Harvard will receive no more federal grants. About $400-million is being withheld from Columbia. In one form or another, some of the country’s most prestigious universities are being punished. The Trumpian attacks are defended as eliminating “waste and duplication. Rather, the campaign is a politically motivated campaign to punish institutions the Trump administration considers ideologically hostile.
For U.S. or Canadian ex-patriate researchers who have either lost their grants/jobs, or who cannot abide the anti-intellectual climate of the Trump era, Canada is geographically adjacent and largely English-speaking, with research institutions and three universities ranked in the top 100 in the world (University of Toronto, McGill and the University of British Columba) in the Times Higher Education survey. What’s needed – and urgently – is a national effort to recruit at least some of these brains to Canada.
Urgently, because countries are already trying to lure U.S. talent. The European Union has announced it will spend $556-million (U.S.) over two years to “make Europe a magnet for researchers.” The French government said it will spend $113-million (U.S.) to attract U.S. researchers. Spain is spending about $100-milllion. Sweden’s minister of education posted on X a message to US. researchers declaring ”We need you!” The British government is spending $66-million to re-locate scientists. The Australian Academy of Science has begun a global search for talent following its president’s declarations that there is “an urgent and unparalleled opportunity to attract the smartest minds leaving and the United States.”
These are national efforts, of the kind none exist in Canada. Canadian universities such as University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, Laval and a few others are launching their own campaigns to attract talent north. But from the provincial governments and the newly-minted Mark Carney government in Ottawa: silence, save for one vague phrase in Mr. Carney’s mandate letter to ministers to attract “the best talent in the world to help build our economy.” These are words without a plan. In the Liberals’ election platform there was nothing about a “brain gain.” These days, the federal-provincial discourse is a modern-day iteration of a slogan once attached to the Canadian economy: Canada is a nation, to use the Biblical phrase, of ”hewers of wood and drawers of water”
Weak productivity is the principal underlying cause for Canada’s multi-decade slow growth and meager income gains. Listening to the political class, however, the answer to our economic ills lies almost exclusively in pumping pump more oil and natural gas, pulling more minerals from the ground, building pipelines and dams, and speeding up the approval processes for all this resource extraction activity. These might be worthy objectives, if easier promised than done, but long-term productivity gains also come from brains and innovation. Or, to put matters perhaps more politely, the country needs both to enhance its resources extraction industries AND improve its collective brain power, one critical element being research.
Consider what Canada is up against in the world of science, technology and research. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute produces excellent reports now gaining world-wide attention tracking “critical technologies” around the world. The technologies span defence, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, computing, advanced minerals and quantum technology. The question asked by AAPSI’s data is: “Who is leading the technology race in critical technologies? The answer, China by a mile. China leads in 37 of 44 technologies. AAPSI also studied countries from 2019 to 2023 for “high impact research outputs” across 64 technologies. China led in all but seven categories. As for Canada in these 64 areas? Two fifth-place finishes – small satellites and space-launched systems.
Talking up the virtues of research which might lead to innovation, which in turn might help goose productivity, doesn’t win votes. Not like fossil fuel or mining projects that, when constructed and completed, create jobs and put money in government coffers. Research, by contrast, is almost always a long-term investment in very bright people who may or may not produce innovations that can turn into economic gains.
Canadian businesses, with some exceptions, have been weak research performers. As a result, the federal government has developed and financed range of programs for university research. In seizing this unprecedented opportunity to lure brains north, there’s no point starting over. Take the existing programs and grow them – but in addition create a new program specifically designed to bring talent north. And make it a national program rather than have a scattered series of provincial or university initiatives. And lure not just any kind of talent, but talent in the STEM sector – science, technology and medicine, because remembering Canada’s productivity challenge from STEM researchers eventually might come the best bang for the buck. We already have research programs for humanities scholars and social scientists, although of course those in these fields would say the programs are under-financed. But to govern is to choose, and the government should choose STEM.
How might this kind of research program work? Here’s one way. Choose a trio of former university presidents such as David Naylor (University of Toronto), Indira Samarasekera (University of Alberta), Jacques Fremont (University of Ottawa). Have the universities across Canada submit to this trio their best ideas and the costs for attracting ex-patriate or U.S. talent either for new ventures or enlarging existing ones. Let the existing Canadian Foundation for Innovation be the clearing house for applications in this competition and offer advice to the trio of outside experts. But let the trio decide which projects and people to fund – not the cabinet!
Cabinet ministers generally know nothing about research. What they understand is politics. Put money in front of them and within minutes they will be apportioning it among regions, provinces and cities, spreading money around for political purposes, thereby diluting the purpose of the program. They won’t easily face the obvious fact that the recruited researchers will not gravitate to small universities or second- or third-rate ones. They will go to universities with size, already proven research capacities and medical schools.
Where, pray tell, will new money come from for this “brain gain” initiative? The answer: to govern is to choose. In the Liberal platform, as in many platforms, there were vote-getting, short-term promises of little long-term benefit, especially plans to tackle Canada’s chronic productivity challenge. The promise to spend $150-million on CBC/Radio Canada. What would that do for productivity? Nothing. Forget about it. The one-per cent income tax cut for low- and moderate=income people? Bad economics and a political bribe. The Parliament Budget Office estimates this promise will cost $28-billion in the next five years, starting with $4.2-billion in year one. Lower the threshold for the tax cut and invest perhaps $400-$500-million in research -- in other words, for long-term gain.
Sensible decisions by whatever method for augmenting research capabilities will take time. Time to prepare proposals, attract talent, properly cost initiatives, give to those who decide which projects and people to favour. But we can’t wait too long. Other countries are hunting for U.S. talent.
A competition is unfolding courtesy of Trump’s vengeful attacks on science, elites and knowledge. In the November, 2026 mid-term elections, the MAGA Party – the accurate name for what was once the Republican Party -- might lose its slim majority in the House of Representatives, thereby putting a modest brake on Trumpian madness. Act, therefore, with all deliberate haste, yes. But make the brain gain of Canadian ex-patriate and disillusioned American researchers happen.