Industry Committee on April 17th, 2008

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I want to ask a question specifically on what many believe to be the greatest opportunity in terms of commercialization over the next 10 to 20 years, and that's the whole area of clean technology and environment technologies, with the emerging energy demands of India, China, Brazil, and others.

Canada has a unique potential as an energy country to actually position itself as a clean energy country if we do the right research. B.C. firms like Kleiner Perkins and others are lining up and putting a lot of money in. Last year $150 billion was put in in terms of capital invested in clean technology.

What should we be doing to position ourselves singularly and to have a focus on making ourselves the best place in the world to research, develop, commercialize, and export clean technology and environmental technologies?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, I think we'll get Mr. Lloyd to answer this one.

[Dr. Nigel Lloyd]

Yes, perhaps I can take that one.

This of course aligns very well with one of the S and T strategy's priority areas of natural resources and energy, and we indeed have a strategic area on sustainable energy systems. So what we need to do is put more focus on research to try to bring out the best possible technologies that we can then transfer to the private sector. We are indeed putting much more emphasis on these areas right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Mr. Knight.

[James Knight]

I really would invite the members to look at this brochure to understand the remarkable successes of commercialization in community colleges, institutes, polytechnics, CEGEPs, and so on. The examples are stunning. It is market pull. It is what the local businesses have identified as opportunities, and I think the success is quite notable. It's not just universities. This is our key message.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brison.

We'll go to Madame Brunelle.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Good morning, madam. Good morning, gentlemen.

In the light of what Mr. Brison said, one thing strikes me, Mr. Lloyd. You told us, among other things, that industry has little involvement in research. That involvement must be increased. This is not the first time that I have heard that said here at this committee.

As well, Mr. Knight, you mentioned community colleges. I tend to believe that, in science and technology, we should align education with the techniques of industry to a greater degree. I was wondering if we are looking for a tie-in with industry.

Do we have a good tie-in with industry and education, which might result in industry becoming interested in more advanced research? Are these sectors linked?

Mr. Gaffield, you were telling us that at Laval University, for example, Mr. Réjean Landry was bringing data from different sectors together. Should we not be coming up with new ways to ensure that we have students trained in the right areas of technology, that research is going in the right direction, and that we will be able to bring everyone together in the interests of getting things to market effectively?

Those are broad strokes, but that is the world we live in.

[Dr. Nigel Lloyd]

I can start. There are two things there.

As I said in my remarks, we plan to double the number of students receiving education in an industrial environment. The result can be a significant increase in people with industrial training. These links between the two fields are very important.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

How do you explain the fact that industry's involvement in research is so small?

[Dr. Nigel Lloyd]

That is really a question for industry. I think that there are a lot of problems.

Part of it is the fact that much of the research in some of the larger companies is done outside Canada. That's one factor. Part of it is the fact that we maybe haven't done as good a job as we can of demonstrating to industry the benefits of trained people in science and technology for their own businesses.

I think there are a lot of issues there.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

May I add something that we have noticed? In Canada, the number of business leaders with masters and doctoral degrees is smaller than in the United States, for example. It is something to think about.

Generally speaking, we do quite well in Canada with participation rates at undergraduate level in colleges and universities. But at graduate level, we are clearly weak, including in the human sciences and in industries whether large, medium or small. Perhaps that is a factor. We do not go to graduate level to a great extent.

The Canadian Council on Learning is studying this at the moment. It is a very good question to which we do not yet have all the answers.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Knight.

[James Knight]

I would just briefly comment that in our sector overwhelmingly the investments are by the private sector. Many of the cases cited in our information involve significant private sector funding. I'm not saying that it's adequate or there shouldn't be much more, but I know that one of our institutions in eastern Canada, the Nova Scotia Community College, has a very large R and D program, which is overwhelmingly supported by private sector interests. Nova Scotia as a province has also contributed, but overwhelmingly the funding is from the private sector.

So there are prototypes and examples that I think are quite positive and that need to be examined.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Is anything being done to attract women into science and technology?

[Dr. Pierre Chartrand]

Yes. The three councils, and I include the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, are making great efforts to put in place programs to encourage the development of careers for women in science, in research and in human sciences.

The issue is not necessarily about support at the beginning. We put our emphasis there in the past and we succeeded in making changes. In health research, the trend in recent years has really changed.

The number of women pursuing advanced studies has greatly increased. However, what we are noticing is that we have moved the problem to the middle stage, that is, beginning researchers making the transition into an established career. We still need to put mechanisms in place and they need a lot of involvement on the part of universities and institutions. The problem is not just in continuing to support research, which is a determining factor in a career path, but universities have to recognize that women need certain accommodations in order to pursue their career paths.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Do I still have time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You can ask a quick question.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Chartrand, you said that we have to attract the brightest researchers, which costs astronomical amounts. It seems to me that we need an infrastructure that supports teams, since research work is often team work.

Is the federal government making enough effort in this area? Is Canada competitive with other countries in the world?

[Dr. Pierre Chartrand]

The programs that Canada has put in place in recent years make us competitive.

Before I joined CIHR, I had the privilege of setting up a new research institute at the Université de Montréal. Because of programs established quite recently, we were able to attract a number of teams from the United States and Europe. We even brought home a good number of researchers and their teams, which is essential for the continuity and the quality of the research. There has been enormous progress in this area.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. Merci.

We'll go to Mr. Carrie, please.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to be very quick with my questions and allow you time to answer. The first question is more to the government witnesses.

How would you decide on which research project sectors you give money to, as far as the process is concerned? I wonder if you could comment on that.

I did want to give Mr. Knight a chance to comment. We hear over and over again that Canadians are really good at the theoretical research, but as my colleague was stating, there seems to be this big commercialization gap, and applied research is very critical for Canada's future. I was wondering whether you see that there's a bias in the system--I've heard this before--towards the universities as opposed to the community colleges.

With that, I'd like to be quiet and let you all respond to that. That should take my six minutes.

[Dr. Nigel Lloyd]

I'll start on how we decide which sectors to give money to.

We do that on a regular basis with a fairly comprehensive approach of consultation with obviously the research community, but with other government departments as well. We go out and say, “What are your most pressing issues at this time?” We have several months of consultation, and then we come to a conclusion as to what our priority areas for our strategic projects program should be. This was done, of course, before the S and T strategy, and it happened that there was very good coincidence with the priority areas in the strategy. We do that about every five years, or something like that, to make sure they stay up to date.

[Dr. Pierre Chartrand]

I would add a comment to that.

Certainly very important in health research and the other areas too is that we need to be in line with...because knowledge translation involves the application of the results. In health that is largely dependent on the provinces, so we really need to have strong consultation with the provinces and know their priorities in order to be able to respond to this, and so that there will be an up-taking of the results, because they'll be interested in them.

Another comment I would make, though, is that the enterprise, the research, is also based on the fact that we support the best ideas from the brightest minds. That means we do not necessarily solely focus on targeted areas, but give the possibility for the researchers to present their best ideas. It's very difficult to predict the ideas that will have made a difference in years to come.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

Could I follow that up? It's such an important issue.

The question is very interesting, because what we're basically faced with is trying to address and contribute to issues that are in the headlines and preoccupying us today, and at the same time trying to get ready for tomorrow and to prepare the way for our descendants and so on. It's always that balance in trying to do that. I often think about what I like to call the September 10, 2001, story, when we were financing work on the Middle East and the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and all of sudden, the next day, it became crucial to our understanding of world events.

It's that balancing act. We work at that a lot with our expert committees and in interactions with our colleagues in government and across Canada. I think it's so far, so good--so far no issue has come up instantly where we can't turn and say, wow, we have some experts we can contribute. Then when it becomes important and we get additional investments--management, business, finance, environment, and so on--we can really ratchet that up, but we have that base to build on.