The significant cuts to research funding during the 1990s combined with targeted re-investments favouring commercial research has created an unbalanced national research agenda. Increased core funding to post-secondary education institutions can reduce the pressure on universities to generate revenues from ties to industry.

The three granting councils were established to promote basic and curiosity driven research. The government's drive for commercialisation means that funding has been increasingly directed to those areas of study that are considered allies of industry: business-science, technology, applied health science, etc. Granting council funding has not kept pace with the needs of graduate students and faculty members. Industry Canada's narrow definition of "innovation" excludes most areas of research from new funding.

Canada currently lacks any standardised, transparent and consistent system for maintaining research integrity for research conducted in public institutions or public affiliated institutions. The onus is often placed on universities to ensure adequate standards of integrity are maintained for research. The creation of such an agency would provide clarity to the roles and responsibilities of researchers and research funders, and openness to the processes by which breaches to research integrity would be investigated.

The public record demonstrates that good-faith whistleblowers, some publicly vindicated, have experienced harm or ruin to their professional careers through threats, censorship, retaliatory investigations, academic expulsion, denial of access to their data and laboratories, and even threats of deportation or physical injury. High-profile Canadian cases demonstrate that whistleblowers in this country are not immune to retaliatory attacks and--in the case of graduate students or faculty without tenure--having their academic career derailed.

Private funding cannot in any way abrogate the public purpose of research. Therefore restrictions at an institutional or granting council level must prohibit contracts requiring non-disclosure of research results or the buy out of researchers to be working for industry while holding positions in public institutions. Additionally, the main principals to which researchers in public research institutions are accountable should be the scholarly community and the public.

Increased industry involvement alters the way research is conducted. High profile cases have illustrated that researchers can find themselves in a conflict of interest between meeting contractual obligations with industry, providing results that have positive commercial potential and having free and open debate within a scholarly community. Ultimately a public post-secondary education researcher's responsibility is to the public even if private sponsors are involved. Restrictions are needed as to the influence a private sponsor can place upon the researcher in a public institution.

As knowledge is increasingly commodified and only available through licensing and payment, access to academic journals and other resources becomes more restricted. The Open Access and Creative Commons movements advance a model that allows researchers or creators of knowledge to protect their knowledge from private use by "licensing" it to the public. Through Creative Commons licensing, a creator can still place restrictions on a work but can also select the freedoms available to a user or to transfer the work entirely to the public domain.