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Speaking two years after he and his colleagues warned about flat-lining investments in research, University of Toronto President Emeritus Dr. David Naylor recently reiterated the need for continued support of science to ensure the country’s future prosperity.

An article this week in  recounted a keynote speech in which Naylor urged the scientific community to be in “permanent campaign mode.” The summit, held last month in Ottawa, was organized by the Canadian Consortium for Research, an umbrella group representing 50,000 researchers and 650,000 students at universities, government labs and the private sector.

“We have thousands of people dying of measles because ignorance is an epidemic,” said Naylor, who led a blue-ribbon panel that looked at the state of science funding in Canada and made sweeping recommendations for reform. 

“Anti-science, anti-research views are a contagious, malign force in the world. Research is about the entire country’s future – public, private sector and civil society. It’s about talent, not technology. It’s about people, not patents. It’s about creating a critical capacity in young people and not about commercialization.”