Finance Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2009

[Dr. Peter George]

Well, that is one way in which the federal government can, in effect, provide a transfer direct to the institutions that need the resources, but I would be foolhardy if I were to say that McMaster would raise its fees by exactly the amount of any additional federal transfer to students. I do think there is room for a national discussion on this, and my discussions with students have generally been of the form that student aid, especially for those most in need, is priority one.

Second, the issue of tuition increase is muted if students see corresponding increases in resources coming from levels of government and individual donors to ensure that not just access but also the quality agenda is attended to and that the students are making the investment through their own fees in a high-quality education that will provide them with future returns on that investment.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. McCallum.

Monsieur Laforest.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

First, I would like to say hello to the witnesses.

My question is for Mr. George or Mr. Elbestawi.

You say that McMaster University is a pioneer in research designed to market products developed through applied research.

I must say, first of all, that I find it extremely interesting that a university is taking this kind of approach, but I wonder what the role of the private sector is. What kind of balance should there be between private sector investment in this kind of research or marketing and that of government? Is it a matter of marketing, and thus of products that private businesses will put on the market in order to make profits? Is there a policy in that area at McMaster University?

[Dr. Peter George]

If we may, both of us will respond to this question.

In terms of the bigger picture, a couple of years ago we had a group develop a report on commercialization at the university, because we see that one of the major challenges is promoting a commercial culture within the university that sees the importance of taking applied research, those next steps to the innovation process and technology transfer process, to helping to create wealth. So at the university level, while we've had a lot of interaction with the private sector, we still see the need to promote a greater sense of cultural attachment to university prioritization of commercialization as a value of the university and its activities.

We've put in place a number of instruments to help further that, and Mo will address those.

[Dr. Mo Elbestawi]

Our position at McMaster is that universities don't do commerce, but they facilitate commerce. That means our job is to create a culture and systems that allow students and faculty members who would like to commercialize to move in this direction. In doing that we create a system that will really maximize the potential of the university.

The role of the private sector in some areas of research is obviously quite important. In our university in some areas like manufacturing and engineering, for example, approximately 35% of the total funding comes from industry.

So industry plays an important role and it's a good role. It's something we encourage significantly.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Perfect, thank you.

I have a second question for Mr. Sinclair from the Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce.

You recommend, second, that the government present a viable plan to avoid structural deficits. In the past 15 years, a number of your members, who are employers, have contributed to the employment insurance fund, and the government has used the employment insurance fund to reduce the deficit.

Without going in too much detail or making too many proposals, do you believe your members are still in favour of this kind of situation? They may not have been at the outset; they weren't asked.

[Art Sinclair]

In response to our recommendation for a plan to eliminate the deficit, we're a Chamber of Commerce, so we have a wide variety of members from universities, municipalities, the public sector, and the private sector. But those in the private sector are very concerned about the deficit and the impact it has on their operations. All businesses over the last year have had to take measures to restrain their spending and exercise extreme discretion in how they allocate their resources, so we'd like to see the same from government.

On the EI fund, our biggest concern as the Chamber of Commerce--and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has expressed this concern as well a number of times--is the balance between employer premiums and employee premiums. We've made a number of submissions in the past calling on the government to seriously examine and address the issue of employer premiums under the EI program to ensure that we have a competitive structure there and don't get into a situation where we have huge surpluses.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

That's good.

You're telling us that's your concern and you say you would like a better balance between employer and employee contributions. I imagine, even though you didn't say it, that you would also like the employment insurance fund to really be used for employment insurance, not deficit insurance.

[Art Sinclair]

Yes, we would like to see the employment insurance plan operate like many private sector insurance plans.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

That's good; thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Merci, Monsieur Laforest.

We'll go to Mr. Menzies, please.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our presenters.

For those of you who haven't presented to a committee meeting and pre-budget consultation before, take no offence if we don't ask questions of everyone. It's not that we don't listen and hear your presentations. It's just that we don't have enough time to ask questions of everybody.

So we do appreciate the input, and it is all recorded. I don't know if the chair has explained that. We do take all of the presentations into account and we do appreciate them.

Having said that, we're with a very interesting challenge this year in trying to wind down.... I was glad to hear Mr. Sinclair reaffirm that fact, that our spending was short term and that we're in a deficit position and that we need to find a way to control spending.

In that context, that's what we need to take forward as recommendations. That's not to discredit any of your suggestions at all, and please don't take it that way.

To Mr. George from McMaster University, commercialization is so critical. I think you have probably already answered that question, so I won't ask about that. But competing in areas of expertise has always been a bit of a challenge for me. We hear from all sides how important it is to provide an education to our children so they can become the leaders of the future and drive our economy. Universities continue to compete for expertise and areas of expertise. I'm sure you've dealt with this, that universities are looking for money to compete against each other.

Is there a way to focus specialization so that we can focus the valuable taxpayers' dollars we have? I hope I'm explaining this properly.

[Dr. Peter George]

I think it's perfectly clear.

Generally speaking, I think we're very good in Canada at doing research and producing intellectual property. The weakness is on the commercialization side and that's why we've chosen to address it.

In terms of specialization or focus, rather than simply duplicating efforts, we do two things at McMaster, which in some sense, I think, represent efforts that may not be ubiquitous, but are at least central to many of the major research universities.

First, we have a very strong commitment to setting priorities within the university. We can't do everything at the level we aspire to do it. If excellence is important to us, we must focus, and we have six areas of strategic research priority that inform all of our investment decisions on the research agenda. Mo has mentioned one, materials and manufacturing. We are the leading Canadian university in this area. Another one would be applied radiation sciences. We have a nuclear reactor on campus. We have received KIP money to expand the nuclear research building and activities, and so forth. So we take the focus-setting or priority-setting very seriously.

Second, we have developed a number of collaborative initiatives with other universities. Because Art is here, the one I will mention is our work with the University of Waterloo. We have a couple of major things under way right now. One is a proposal called Green Art, for collaborative research with private sector partners in the greening of the automobile sector, with a view to enhancing productivity and making the sector more competitive internationally, so the Canadian auto industry will remain a state-of-art, leading edge, competitive industry. That's but one example, but we have a number of those.

So I think it's a matter of focus within the institution and setting priorities and also picking areas of collaboration with other institutions that build centres of excellence.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

The money that we invest in research chairs, is that money well spent? Is that the right way to do it?

[Dr. Peter George]

The money is extremely well spent, in our view. We have almost 70 Canada research chairs. Those chairs, plus the new chairs in international research excellence and the commercialization of research, are extremely effective in helping us support our areas of focus and in attracting to Canada scholars of international distinction, who help build Canada's reputation for excellence, and will contribute ultimately to the commercialization agenda. It's money well spent in a program that needs to be renewed when it expires.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. There are a couple of minutes left--

[Joel Duff]

Could I respond to that?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Yes, of course. Please do.

[Joel Duff]

As the Canadian Federation of Students, we represent about 70,000 graduate students in the country, including exchange students. On the issue of the Canada research chairs, we think it's obviously excellent to develop these chair positions, because you don't just get the chair; you also get the infrastructure that goes with it. Usually an office goes with it, and it provides a centre for research in a particular area. I just want to highlight an issue that we're concerned about in Canada's colleges and universities, and that's the incredibly increasing reliance on contract faculty.

What we have on the one hand is the situation of the Canada research chairs, who are super-elite all-star researchers. What we have on the other hand are institutions at which students by and large go through an undergraduate degree without ever developing a relationship with a full-time tenured professor. This reliance on contract faculty is a huge problem on a lot of campuses, whether the students are current doctoral students or recent graduates. Doctoral students and former doctoral students teaching at McMaster are traveling to Wilfrid Laurier and to Guelph, cobbling together a career by teaching classes on all these different campuses and not doing any research. They live in their cars, and their cars are pretty much their offices. It doesn't create the kind of quality we need across the board.

While we like things like the Canada research chairs, which create excellence, we also need to elevate the faculty-to-student ratios, and we need to make sure that there's more tenure-track faculty on campuses across the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Mr. Rae, you would like to comment? Please comment very briefly. Mr. Menzies is out of time, unfortunately.

[John Rae]

The greening of the auto sector is an issue for us. The new hybrid automobiles are too quiet for blind persons to hear. They are dangerous, so Canada needs to follow what's going on. Legislation is now before the U.S. Congress to fix that problem, and Canada needs to regulate these new automobiles.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Pacetti.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing. It's always interesting when we have witnesses from different spectrums and with different points of view. We're not going to have enough time to get to everybody, as Mr. Menzies was saying, but we'll try our utmost.

I have a question for the Canadian Health Food Association.

Ms. Marrett, you talked about applications being refused or withdrawn. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think you stated why these applications were withdrawn or refused. Is it because of process, lack of funding, or...? I didn't see that anywhere.

[Penelope Marrett]

The majority of the application refusals were not based on safety. They were based on the evidence that was provided. We've been told by Health Canada that they are aware that sometimes they are asking for information that is not available. It makes you wonder why they are asking for the information then.

We have been told that parts of the standards of evidence--

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Well, I'm hoping it's for the safety of Canadians.