U.S. Government Funding of Cooperative Research and Development in North America,

The U.S. government funds cooperative RD projects in and with counterparts in Canada and Mexico. Since 1993, U.S. government agencies have spent more than 100 million a year on projects involving cooperation with Canada andor Mexico. A variety of motives and missions drive this investment. The activities funded have been focused primarily on common interests and problems in environmental, agricultural, and earth sciences, as well as on biomedical and genetic research. Formal collaboration puts Canada and Mexico among the U.S. governments top 10 binational RD partners. Wagner, 1997, pp. 17-19. Funds for collaborative activities with Canada and Mexico, with a few exceptions, are not set aside specifically for this purpose. Collaboration with our neighbors arises in two ways One, when a U.S. government agency determines that a joint project is in the interests of the mission needs of that agency, such as a Department of Agriculture study of forest monitoring project at the borders, and two, when a U.S. government funded researcher identifies a partner in Canada or Mexico with whom collaboration would be in the interests of a scientific inquiry, such as a comparison by university based biomedical researchers of the efficacy of heart bypass surgery. The benefits of collaboration are determined at the program or researcher level and are generally based upon a need to access data or natural resources or otherwise to link to excellent research taking place in Canada or Mexico.