However, a spokeswoman for Gary Goodyear, the minister of state for science and technology, said the government remained committed to funding science.
Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear was unavailable for comment.
Gilbert Normand, Secretary of State for Science, Research and Development, pointed out, "The new money will secure funding for the 2005 to 2010 period".
The budget reaffirms plans by Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear to revamp the National Research Council, the government's primary in-house research arm.
"We are working very hard to find some new money for NSERC," said Secretary of State for Science, Research and Development Gilbert Normand in an interview with Next Wave Canada, adding that the government is well aware of the Council's dwindling budget.
Although both the Minister of Industry, Brian Tobin, and his Secretary of State for Science, Research and Development, Gilbert Normand, will be back, so will opposition spokespersons Charlie Penson (Canadian Alliance) and Pierre Brien (Bloc Québécois).
Gary Goodyear, the minister of state for science and technology, this spring asked the Social Science and Humanities Research Council to review its decision to support a June conference at York University in Toronto the United Kingdom on the prospects for peace in the Middle East because of his concern that some of the participants may be biased against Israel.
But, in a letter to the Spanish Secretary of State for Science made public today, a hundred CSIC directors warned that the money provided is "not sufficient to get us to the end of the year, not even prioritizing the expenses as indicated".
"When our recently named secretary of state for science and research says in a public interview that RyC programme is just a fixed-term postdoc position he is redefining [at his own convenience] the purpose of the RyC programme created by [his] Ministry," writes Ana Maria Mancho, a former RyC researcher, in an e-mail.
The Conservative Party would not respond to a request for comment for this article, but in a debate on CBC radio program Quirks and Quarks, Conservative candidate for Cambridge and former minister of state for science and technology Gary Goodyear defended his party's record.
