While each granting council showed considerable growth, the MRC/CIHR increased the most, reflecting the prioritization of health research and the broader mandate of the CIHR, which replaced the MRC in 2000. [...] It is the aim of the Commission that this report will foster a discussion of the role of universities within the context of economic development so that policy-makers and university stakeholders in general will be- gin to reflect upon the future of their post-secondary systems. [...] Short and longer-term goals are set (including to rank among the top five countries in the world in terms of R&D performance, to double current (2002) investments in R&D and to increase the admission of master’s and PhD students by an average of five percent per year)⁵ that incorporate participation and cooperation between and with- in both public and private sectors. [...] It then moves to an analysis of many of the research funding sta- tistics presented in the Commission’s 2000 Report on Post-Secondary Research Trends, including R&D expenditures by sector, per capita, and within the higher education sector, showing the evolution of fund- ing between 1996 and 2002.⁹ In Chapter 3, the report turns to federal government funding of university research through an analy [...] R&D Funding in Atlantic Universities MPHEC 3 the presence in the Maritimes of the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission (MPHEC) as the only cross-institutional coordinating and collaborative vehicle of its kind in the country.¹⁷ Finally, the fact that Atlantic Canada has a faculty (12%) and student enrolment (10%) proportion higher than predicted from its population (7%) figures presents