Ontario Advancing Homegrown Research and Innovation

Investment will fund cutting-edge discoveries at six leading research institutes

The Ontario government is investing nearly $200 million over the next three years to help advance Ontario-made research and innovation at six leading research institutes. This funding will help keep ideas, expertise and intellectual property in the province and support long-term economic growth.

“Ontario’s research institutes are making new discoveries and doing cutting-edge research that is significantly improving lives,” said Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities. “This funding will help researchers continue to solve real-world problems, such as making clinical trials timelier and developing tools for earlier cancer diagnosis so Ontarians can live longer and healthier lives.”

This investment includes:

• $144 million over two years for the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, the province’s hub for world-class cancer research, taking on the biggest challenges in cancer and delivering real-world solutions to find cancer earlier and treat it more effectively.
• $36 million over three years for the Perimeter Institute, a not-for-profit, registered charity devoted to fundamental research, training and educational outreach in theoretical physics.
• $5 million over two years for Ontario Genomics, a not-for-profit organization leading the application of genomics-based solutions to drive economic growth, improved quality of life and global leadership for Ontario.
• $4 million over two years for Clinical Trials Ontario, a leading non-profit organization in the clinical trials community dedicated to strengthening, promoting and capitalizing on Ontario’s competitive advantages for conducting high-quality clinical trials.
• $4 million over two years for The Fields Institute, an internationally renowned centre for mathematical collaboration, learning and innovation where everyone can discover mathematics, and where mathematicians make meaningful contributions to the world.
• $3.16 million over two years for Compute Ontario, which brings together partners and stakeholders in the province’s digital research infrastructure ecosystem to coordinate provincial and federal investments and strategy to better support Ontario’s researchers. This includes providing strategic leadership and oversight for Ontario’s Advanced Research Computing (ARC) systems, which are critical resources for more than 6,000 researchers across Ontario.

These six research institutes have a strong track record of fostering collaborations with researchers from several different sectors, including the life sciences, finance, agriculture, quantum computing and information technology. They also play an important role in cutting red-tape and delivering programs that help researchers and entrepreneurs commercialize their work and solve complex problems that benefit the province.

This funding will also help these research institutes conduct outreach and provide students experiential learning opportunities so Ontario can continue to grow its highly skilled workforce and attract more people to the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields.

The research sector is a key source of innovation and commercialization in the province, making it one of the leading contributors to Ontario’s global competitiveness and productivity. This investment is fostering a skilled labour force and promoting new business opportunities in Ontario.