Canada: making more stupid scientific and political decisions.

Well, isn't this just the kind of news you like to wake up to in the morning:

Canada stands to lose a cutting-edge scientific project -- a massive and growing database of bio-molecular information for scientists around the world -- to Singapore after the Ontario government failed to renew the project's funding.

The Blueprint Initiative was launched in 2002 with nearly $20-million from the federal and provincial governments. But, three years later, the government funding to keep it going is nowhere to be found, says Christopher Hogue, who runs the project that is affiliated with Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital.

Earlier this month, Dr. Hogue was forced to lay off more than half of his staff, letting 33 people go -- most of them highly sought-after scientists with masters and doctoral degrees -- as funding for the operation dwindled.

"The taxpayer paid for all these," Dr. Hogue said yesterday, pointing to stacks of extra computer monitors in a room now full of empty cubicles in his University Avenue offices.

Sigh.