This isn't limited to the Canadian government. Try to get a STEM paper published in a respectable venue in any field that has no appreciable economic utility.

This isn't limited to the Canadian government. Try to get a STEM paper published in a respectable venue in any field that has no appreciable economic utility. Nobody cares about finding things out simply because they are interesting (at least not enough to do something about it), they all have to have an obvious application that generates money. Another way to look at this is that it's Canada's way of increasing the publication rate of its scientists.