Canada hires 48 U.S. scholars with C$504 million in chair money

Canada named 64 new research chairs on Thursday and said 48 of them are leaving American universities. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly made the announcement at the University of British Columbia. The first cohort of Eddie Goldenberg Research Chairs of Canada will share C$504 million over eight years. Another C$37 million will help universities recruit 63 "emerging leaders" in a second round next year.

The chairs sit inside the Canada Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative, a C$1.7 billion programme launched last December. Ottawa wants up to 100 senior recruits. The fields on Thursday's list include medical isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals, molecular imaging, climate resilience, quantum networks, RNA therapeutics, artificial intelligence and global security.

The University of British Columbia took nine chairs. The University of Ottawa took seven. McGill and the University of Toronto each took six. One Toronto post supports Sara Seager, the planetary scientist who moved from MIT last year. Named arrivals include Peter Caravan, leaving Harvard for a translational imaging chair at UBC; Curtis Huttenhower, a computational biologist also leaving Harvard for UBC; Ethan Zuckerman, who invented the pop-up ad and will hold a digital public sphere chair at McGill; and Kevin Hall, a nutrition scientist moving to Ottawa.

Seth Guikema, a climate resilience researcher at the University of Michigan, told the BBC he began looking at Canadian posts last year because his work in the United States had become harder. The University of Michigan declined to comment. Joly, asked whether the programme would be read in Washington as an escalation in the trade fight, said: "The US administration is taking its own decisions and we're taking ours."

The 16 chairs who are not coming from the United States are arriving from 12 countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Japan and India. Four are from Britain. Two are from China. Joly said Canada was also competing with France and the European Union, which have run their own recruitment drives.

Canadian campuses had already started their own smaller raids. The University of Toronto announced a C$24 million programme last November to hire 100 post-doctoral researchers. UBC reopened graduate admissions and fast-tracked applications from U.S. students in spring 2025 after American applications rose.

The timing is not accidental. Joly spoke less than a week after trade talks with the United States collapsed. Federal funding cuts and tighter visa rules on U.S. campuses have given Canadian deans a list of people who will take a call. The chairs are not cheap. C$504 million for 64 people works out at just under C$8 million each over eight years, covering salary, students and labs.

Whether the labs stay is a different test. Research groups move slowly. Grants, equipment and graduate students do not cross a border in a single semester. The second cohort, due in 2027, will show if the first 48 were a one-time harvest or the start of a longer shift in where English-speaking science gets done.