Evaluation of the AgriScience Program, 2025 — summary

About the evaluation

• The Office of Audit and Evaluation of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) conducted an evaluation of AgriScience to assess its relevance, design, delivery and performance.
• The evaluation covered activities from 2021-2022 to 2024-2025, which includes the last two years of the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP) and the first two years of the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP). The evaluation used multiple lines of evidence including a review of program documents, a literature review, a targeted file review, key informant interviews, an environmental scan, case studies and an analysis of administrative and financial data.

What we found

Relevance

• AgriScience supports research that contributes to a productive, resilient and sustainable agricultural sector. The program is well aligned with the federal government’s and AAFC’s roles and responsibilities.
• The program helps address key barriers to science and innovation in the agricultural sector.
• The funding landscape for research and innovation in the sector has grown more complex, increasing the importance of coordination between funders and providing an opportunity to better delineate or connect AAFC research programs. Although there is potential for overlap between AgriScience and other federal and provincial programs, recipients use research funding from multiple sources to complement one another.

Design and delivery

• AgriScience has some key design strengths that support the achievement of outcomes. However, the program is now stretched between a variety of objectives and its design lacks the specificity to address any one of those objectives in an optimal way.
• AgriScience is a long-standing program and represents a major funding source in the research landscape. The changes made to the program’s parameters under Sustainable CAP were met with criticism by recipients who indicated those changes lacked an industry perspective.

Performance

• Challenges in the application and review processes delayed funding decisions under Sustainable CAP. AgriScience timelines do not align well with the reality of agricultural research.
• Some AgriScience assessment criteria are not clearly communicated to applicants or consistently defined for reviewers.
• Under CAP, the program met most of its intended outcomes. Recent performance measurement improvements are expected to help the program better understand its impacts at the end of the Sustainable CAP period.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1: The Assistant Deputy Minister of Programs Branch should revise the Sustainable CAP applicant guide, application forms and technical review forms to establish clear and consistent project assessment criteria in all relevant documentation.

Recommendation 2: The Assistant Deputy Minister of Programs Branch, in collaboration with the Assistant Deputy Ministers of Science and Technology Branch and Strategic Policy Branch, should address design issues in potential future programming by:

• developing a focussed set of objectives
• identifying the means to support these objectives; and
• engaging with a wide range of stakeholders

Recommendation 3: As part of the design of potential future programming, the Assistant Deputy Minister of Programs Branch should:

• explore solutions for design issues around timing and business cycles, including those related to the Policy Framework
• determine timelines that better reflect requirements for agricultural research

Management response and action plan

Management agrees with the evaluation recommendations and has developed an action plan to address them by September 2027.