Thank you very much.
We'll go to Mr. Stanton, please.
Evidence of meeting #42 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was funding.
Evidence of meeting #42 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was funding.
2:05 p.m.
Conservative
2:05 p.m.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be splitting my time with Mr. Carrie.
To Mr. Brooks, one of the things we've considered over the course of this study is the current imbalance in Canada. We're investing a lot of money in the front end--the basic research side, and with universities through the tri-council and so on--but we haven't been as successful in enabling or engaging the private sector.
You mentioned your affiliate program. Considering that we came to the table and bumped up that indirect cost side of the equation, how can we find ways to make sure that's also levering us greater advantage with bringing the private sector to the table?
2:05 p.m.
Associate Vice-President, Research, University of British Columbia
I'll ask Angus to speak to that in a moment, but I would say a word about the CECR program. That was an attempt by the federal government to do exactly what you said. I think it will have been largely successful if it continues in the vein it's been in.
We took advantage of it quite a lot in British Columbia. We had five heavily engaged from B.C. in general and four largely from UBC. They fit this model of taking it to the next step very well. They have independent business people on boards and so on who help the university people. There's a little bit of a problem, I think, in having to incorporate those independent bodies, because these are university people paid by the university, and we own their IP, and yet there's an incorporated body sort of telling them what to do while the teeth are not there. But I think the program in general is a very good one.
Angus, you'd like to comment?
2:05 p.m.
Managing Director, University of British Columbia
The use of indirect costs for the affiliates programs is already happening to a certain extent, but the amount of reimbursement under the indirect costs program is 25% when the real costs are 50%. So that money is really spent in multiple directions, and there's not a lot of it allocated towards any specific use because the draws on it are so large.
I think there's also something that we can learn from the industry affiliates programs in the U.S. The example that I think of is Stanford, where they have 50 of these in play. They bring in close to 300 different companies associated with those individual affiliates programs. I think that's a great way of starting to engage the company, which is what I understand we're trying to achieve here, and to a certain extent trying to get them to change their culture so they value research.
May 29th, 2008 / 2:10 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Watzke, as a representative of the colleges, you seem to be in the minority here today. I was wondering if you could comment on whether you think there is a bias in the government granting councils in terms of giving money to universities versus colleges, say for theoretical research versus applied research. You mentioned wanting to get 1%. I'm surprised. How much do you get now?
2:10 p.m.
Dean, Applied Research and Director, Technology Centre and Dr. Tong Louie Living Laboratory, British Columbia Institute of Technology
It's much less than that.
2:10 p.m.
Dean, Applied Research and Director, Technology Centre and Dr. Tong Louie Living Laboratory, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Yes. It's actually a fact. I mean, even with the CFIs, or you can go to any of them.... First of all, colleges aren't eligible for a number of the tri-councils. BCIT has worked very hard--we are--but then we don't perform well; and here's how I'd put it in a nutshell.
Although they may change the front-end rules and say that BCIT is allowed to submit a proposal for CECR or NSERC or SSHRC, in my opinion, at the back end they haven't changed their reviewing processes. It is an old club. It's a university club with lots of very respected, very good academics. When they see our applications come in, there are not enough PhDs. They don't count what we're good at, such as the things I mentioned in my presentation. We're really good at making the things, and fixing and solving those problems, but what they're really looking for is licences, patenting, and number of publications.
So we're in a constant dialogue, trying, with these tri-councils, to just get them to use a different filter, and then we'd be willing to be tested. We're willing to say our contribution can be important. But right now it's not working out that way because the system hasn't changed at the back end.
2:10 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
So the rules are set up biased against you. Would you say that?
2:10 p.m.
Dean, Applied Research and Director, Technology Centre and Dr. Tong Louie Living Laboratory, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Right.
2:10 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
I had another question. You talked about external validation. I heard a quote one time about applied research: if private industry puts up their own money for the research, usually it's a good research project because they know that they're going to get some type of return.
Could you explain a little bit more about this external validation process you go through? Is this something you think we should apply to all research?
2:10 p.m.
Dean, Applied Research and Director, Technology Centre and Dr. Tong Louie Living Laboratory, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Well, for our work it's really simple. Here's what we do. We qualify our private clients, even if they're an entrepreneur from a garage or they're a bigger company. We look at four simple things. We see if they have management experience. We see if they have money--and hopefully it's not their mortgage on their parent's home. We see if they've been in this game before, because we've done an analysis of our SMEs that end up having success, and they've always had a previous marriage or previous product. The fourth thing we ask is whether they have any money behind them. We qualify them.
Fifteen years ago we didn't have that luxury, but we're successful enough now that we can do that. You'd be surprised. When an SME comes in our door, as soon as we ask those four questions, we know whether or not we should be working with them using our own time and energy. It's increasing our success rate tremendously.
2:10 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Do you have any recommendations on how the government could encourage more cooperation between universities and colleges?
2:10 p.m.
Dean, Applied Research and Director, Technology Centre and Dr. Tong Louie Living Laboratory, British Columbia Institute of Technology
Sure: just make us the finishing school for them.
2:10 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
2:10 p.m.
Dean, Applied Research and Director, Technology Centre and Dr. Tong Louie Living Laboratory, British Columbia Institute of Technology
No, I'm just kidding.
The universities are great at pushing the knowledge out, and we belong right in there--that's actually who our clients are--before it gets ready for the market, and before the venture capitalists get ready. We have a role to play right there.
We've done that with UBC, SFU, and University of Toronto. We're actually quite humbled by and happy with that role. But a lot of the councils and funding mechanisms don't allow that collaboration to happen easily. If that were part of the deal and NSERC were to say, “If you're serious about commercialization, get a polytechnic as a partner”, I think the game would change.
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
2:15 p.m.
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
Thank you very much.
Thank you to all the witnesses this afternoon for your very succinct and interesting presentations.
My first question is to Mr. Brooks. You talked about balance and ICR funding, and you had a recommendation for a greater proportion of funding for ICR. We've also been talking about looking at the balance of funding between pure research funding and research that's more product-oriented--more commercialization.
I'd be interested in your views, or the views of anyone else, about the current balance of our investments in pure research versus other kinds of research--perhaps the kind of funding you're looking for, Mr. Watzke, which is very specific and niche-oriented.
Clearly we need to make some change to the balance. What would your recommendations be?
2:15 p.m.
Associate Vice-President, Research, University of British Columbia
If you look at NSERC, for instance, they have committees in different areas, and some of those areas are clearly very basic--math, atomic physics, and that sort of thing. In the applied sciences and the health sciences, the allied health sciences, there's a lot of weight given to where this development, whatever it is, will go: what are you going to use the database for, and how is this going to help society?
At the purely academic level we have a pretty good balance for the people who want to take it to the next step. I think it's more in this area where the university is kind of finished. We've gone as far as we can with the kind of funding we can generate as academics, so what's the next step?
Angus mentioned the Centre for Drug Research and Development. That's one category of next steps. These people have all had university careers. One was a CEO who used to work for Angus. They've gone out and raised money from the federal government competitively, and from the provincial government by just making a very strong case. They're in a very good position, because of their own industrial backgrounds, to move these products close to the market.
But it was very awkward for them to fund this. I think the only reason they got funded so well was that they were exactly at the right place, at the right time, with the right people. It would be almost impossible to reproduce. There's no source of money they could have gone to and said, “Okay, we want to put together a process, a set of people, a set of testing laboratories, a partnership with BCIT or whatever, to take that kind of step.”
If there was a source of funding for that level of activity, it would be very helpful. CECR are in that direction, but they're very tightly focused and there aren't very many of them. A larger part where people could apply to that fund, perhaps in partnership with people like my colleagues, would be a useful thing to try.
2:15 p.m.
NDP
Peggy Nash NDP Parkdale—High Park, ON
Maybe I could also explore the issue of IP. It's something we've discussed. At SFU, if you invent it, it's yours. That's also the process at Waterloo. At the research council it's 100% the other way. Some universities have a balance.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. Should we have one system for the country? Is it best to let the universities develop their own IP strategies? How should that work?
2:15 p.m.
Managing Director, University of British Columbia
I think it's a red herring in terms of being a real problem. A lot of it really depends on the nature of the technology. In the IT world, it should flow out with the individual--that's the way that place works. That's a good example of what Waterloo has done.
If you get into the biotech and life sciences, you'd better have pretty strong patent protection. If you take some IP that has been generated in the better-owned institution and try to get investors to put money into it when you can't guarantee you have ownership because you've correctly identified the inventors--that's what happens in better-owned institutions--they will walk away from that kind of transaction.
From a national point of view we want to look at the mandate behind it. The mandate is to disclose it so we know it's there; make sure it's developed for the benefit of Canadians; and make sure there's some sort of return back to the institution as an incentive. But after that, leave it to the institutions to make the decisions on the best way to make that happen in their localized jurisdictions, because each one is different. The UBC model would not work at Waterloo. That's very clear.