Media Releases

University of Toronto welcomes new federal investment in research

April 21, 2015

TORONTO, ON – The fed­er­al government’s renewed invest­ment in the Cana­da Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion (CFI) strength­ens the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s abil­i­ty to con­duct ground-break­ing research that ben­e­fits all Cana­di­ans, said U of T Pres­i­dent Mer­ic Gertler, refer­ring to the $1.3 bil­lion over six years announced in today’s bud­get.

“Canada’s ongo­ing sup­port for research infra­struc­ture is fun­da­men­tal to the country’s research land­scape,” said Gertler.  “This new invest­ment will help posi­tion Cana­da to com­pete on a glob­al lev­el in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, lead­ing to a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for Cana­di­ans and for peo­ple every­where.”

Since CFI’s incep­tion in 1998, U of T and part­ner hos­pi­tals have secured over $800 mil­lion for more than 800 projects. These con­tri­bu­tions are esti­mat­ed to have lever­aged in excess of $1.2 bil­lion in addi­tion­al fund­ing, notably from the Ontario Min­istry of Research and Inno­va­tion.

In addi­tion, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment recent­ly announced fund­ing to ensure that Cana­da remains a lead­ing part­ner in the Thir­ty Meter Tele­scope project, an inter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive to sup­port Canada’s role in world lead­ing astron­o­my and astro­physics.

The fed­er­al government’s addi­tion­al invest­ments of $46 mil­lion in the grant­i­ng coun­cils and $45 mil­lion in TRIUMF will fur­ther sup­port Canada’s lead­ing researchers.

“The lat­est invest­ments in Cana­di­an sci­en­tists and schol­ars and research infra­struc­ture will allow Cana­da – and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to – to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing a state-of-the-art research envi­ron­ment, to attract and retain top researchers and stu­dents from around the world and to sup­port them ful­ly in their work,” said Gertler.

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For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Media Rela­tions
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
416 978‑0100
media.relations@utoronto.ca