Montreal

Quebec's provincial government may offer cash bonuses to researchers and academics, to try to stop them being wooed away by US institutions.

The provincial cabinet has formed a panel to study the brain drain. But research minister Jean Rochon, who leads the study group, says cash bonuses are not the only answer. He believes “a basket” of conditions is needed to keep researchers in Quebec.

Arpi Hamalian, president of the Quebec University Professors Federation, says bonuses won't compensate for years of university underfunding. A strategy to stop the brain drain should “restore the collegial environment that allows for good teaching and research; that means restoring funding,” says the Concordia University education professor.

A study by the independent Conference Board of Canada says that official figures including only permanent emigrants underestimate the problem.

“Until 1989, the combined number of permanent and non-permanent Canadian emigrants to the United States was fairly stable at 17,000 annually,” says the board. “By 1997, the number had increased to 98,000, including a six-fold increase by non-permanent emigrants.”

Researcher Mahmood Iqbal says the North American Free Trade Agreement changed the picture so that more than 90 per cent of US visas granted to Canadian professionals are now non-permanent, and that up to 60 per cent of the people holding them elect to stay permanently.

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien argues that the emigration of professionals is matched or exceeded by the inflow. But Iqbal says these are not comparable in quality, and it may take up to ten years for incomers to equal their Canadian counterparts' productivity.