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The federal government announced Friday $1.5 billion in funding for two new science laboratories to be built at the National Research Council’s Montreal Road campus in Ottawa’s east end.
The campus is already home to dozens of federal research facilities, but the new laboratories will focus on transportation safety research and the “low-carbon economy,” said Jenna Sudds, an Ottawa-area MP and Minister of Families, Children and Social Development.
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“With these investments, we are able to replace aging, pre-war facilities with modern, up-to-date facilities of the future to enable our scientists to do their best and to achieve best possible outcomes in their work for Canadians,” Sudds said.
$1 billion is earmarked for the TerraCanada National Capital Area project, she said. That laboratory will bring the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Natural Resources Canada under one roof, Sudds said, “enabling them to work together on their research.”
Once completed, that laboratory will also be home to researchers from Environment and Climate Change Canada, Health Canada and the NRC, she said, “co-mingling a total of five different federal departments and agencies under one roof, in one lab.”
The additional $500 million is for the Transportation Safety and Technology Science Hub, a laboratory for scientists from Transportation Safety Board of Canada, NRC and Canada’s Aerospace Research Centre’s structures and materials performance laboratory.
Sudds said the hub would be home to aerospace research and testing as well as transportation safety research for rail, marine and pipeline travel.
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Mouhab Meshreki, the NRC’s director general of aerospace research centre, said modern aircrafts were thinner, lighter and consumed less energy, and researchers were working with industry and government departments, including the Department of National Defence.
“We’re looking at new trends, continuing to do research on the structural side of things,” he said during a tour of one of the NRC’s current laboratories.
“Next phase is digitalization. We’re doing physical, structural testing. Don’t you want to be doing digital? In reality, yes, but it’s not today, it’s for the future.”
Approximately 600 people will working in both of the new facilities. Ground-breaking for construction is scheduled for 2025, with completion by 2030 or 2031.
“These two new hub facilities will pave the way for new opportunities for multi-disciplinary collaborations between federal scientists across departments and agencies, with industry and academic partners,” National Research Council president Mitch Davies said.
Sudds added the TerraCanada facility would also be a research hub for critical minerals, including those necessary to make batteries for electric vehicles.
“Research is an important first step, but it evolves to be jobs across the country in a critical sector,” she said.
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