Thanks to Canada's strong fiscal situation, the federal government will be able to continue to support university excellence through another round of Global Excellence Research Chairs, Canada Research Chairs and Vanier Scholarships, and providing more rounds of Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) funding. These will ensure that Canadian universities do not lose ground as the global rankings are shuffled. But these programs, helpful as they are, are targeted efforts. They spread money across many institutions, and increasingly they target research disciplines selected by the federal government. The Global Excellence Research Chairs, for example, can be used only to recruit talent to Canada in a handful of disciplines. They have improved Canada's ability to recruit truly excellent researchers in those areas. However, they will not lift Canadian universities across the board and will do little to help emerging areas of research.