Science and Research Committee on April 11th, 2024

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We heard earlier that the funding from the federal government was insufficient. This creates a competitive rather than a collaborative atmosphere among institutions. Ms. Wagner also expressed concern about this issue.

Ms. Pexman and Mr. McCauley, are you seeing this in your respective areas? What are the consequences of this war of all against all to grab pieces of a pie that isn't big enough for everyone? Please be brief.

[Dr. Penny Pexman]

When resources are scarce, I think people will make difficult choices about where funds should be allocated. I absolutely believe Canada's competitive advantage is eroded when we don't have sufficient funding in the research funding programs.

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

As I mentioned earlier, the mobilization of knowledge creation is a global game. The world is very competitive. In order for Canada to succeed, we have to identify areas where we want to do research that is impactful and can solve problems that Canadians believe are very important for society. Forest fires is a great current-day example.

However, excellence has to be paramount and we have to be able to provide the support mechanism to back our scholars, whether undergraduate students, graduate students, post-docs or faculty members, so they can produce the best research possible given the funds we have.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Ms. Wagner, you can share your final thoughts.

[Dr. Shannon Wagner]

I concur with both of my colleagues and suggest that resourcing the whole system so that it's adequately able to support the kinds of excellence and research that need to be done, across all the different groups and regions doing the research, would absolutely be the best-case scenario for all participants.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you all. Thank you especially to our witnesses, Dr. Shannon Wagner, Dr. Ed McCauley and Dr. Penny Pexman, for their testimony. We had excellent questions and participation as we get started on this study on the distribution of federal government funding among Canada's post-secondary institutions.

If there's any further information you'd like to provide to us, please feel very welcome to do that through our clerk.

Members on Zoom, if you could just stand by, we're going to suspend for a minute or two while we get our next panel up. They're coming from a couple of the colleges in Canada.

We'll suspend for a couple of minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Welcome to our witnesses, who have just joined us.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(i) and the motions adopted by the committee on Tuesday, January 30, and Thursday, February 15, the committee resumes its study of the distribution of federal government funding among Canada's post-secondary institutions.

It's now my pleasure to welcome Dr. Marc Nantel from Niagara College, vice-president of research, innovation and strategic enterprises, who is here in person. We also have, from Aurora College via video, Pippa Seccombe-Hett, vice-president of research.

Ms. Seccombe-Hett, you can choose the language on the bottom of your screen. I see you nodding, so you're well aware of that.

You'll each have five minutes to start.

We'll start with Dr. Nantel from Niagara College.

[Dr. Marc Nantel, Vice-President, Research, Innovation and Strategic Enterprises, Niagara College]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the committee for undertaking this study and for inviting me as a witness.

As said, my name is Marc Nantel and I'm the vice-president of research, innovation and strategic enterprises at Niagara College. I have experience in research at both the university and college levels. I have a Ph.D. in plasma physics, have done research in France and in the U.S. and was an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Toronto for 10 years. I've been at Niagara College since 2011, leading its research and innovation division.

You will no doubt hear much about university research and the distribution of funding between smaller and larger universities for this study. I'm here to discuss the place of colleges within that ecosystem. Interestingly, 11 colleges get more overall research funding than the university listed at number 50 on the Canadian university research list, so several colleges do more funded research than some universities.

College research is often about the application of knowledge to solve immediate problems. It's about the companies that approach us for help. It's about developing new products, processes and services with them. It's about giving college students a richer education.

At Niagara College, we've been doing applied research with industry for more than 25 years. We are currently number one on the top-50 research college list. We focus our applied research on sectors of importance to the Niagara region, such as advanced manufacturing, agriculture and the environment; food and beverages; and business and commercialization. Typically, we require that there be a one-to-one matching of government investment in a project so that the company has skin in the game and the desire to commercialize the result, which leads to faster economic development and job creation.

Here's only one example. I can give more during the question period.

Hamill Machine is a Niagara Falls small to medium-sized enterprise that used to cater to the automotive parts industry. Niagara College helped Hamill develop a completely new product line that automates the harvesting of microgreens, speeding it up by 50 times. Their three harvester machines for cutting, washing and drying are now sold domestically and internationally under a new spinoff company, Hamill Agricultural Processing Solutions, which has grown over the past five years from zero to 20 full-time employees. Last year, it did $3 million in sales and completed its first overseas installation in Abu Dhabi.

That's great, but Canadian colleges achieve outcomes like this for the country on less than a shoestring. I like to say that we do it on the plastic bit at the end of the shoestring. Right now, colleges receive only 2.9% of the federal funding for research.

Here's an example of how colleges lead and could do more with better funding.

Niagara College is the creator and leader of the Southern Ontario Network for Advanced Manufacturing Innovation, or SONAMI. You heard about it from Madam Johnston earlier. It brings together nine colleges and two universities. We like collaborating.

In its eight years of existence so far, SONAMI has undertaken more than 460 projects with 316 industry partners that commercialized 149 products. That's a 32% commercialization rate. It has created more than 280 jobs. Those are undercounts because of reporting. These projects were mostly funded through FedDev Ontario and also through NSERC.

This is an example of how colleges can lead strong networks that include universities, but currently, several federal funding programs supporting similar networks do not allow colleges as lead applicants. This needs to change, as do the measurements of success of such programs, which should reflect what colleges can bring to the table. If the evaluation criteria are about refereed papers instead of the number of jobs created, then college applications won't rank very well. That would be both disappointing and counterproductive if what you want is economic development through manufacturing transformation, transition to a greener economy, industry investment in technologies and increased productivity.

Here's another example of what colleges could do with more than 2.9% of the federal research funding. We don't keep the intellectual property generated through these collaborative projects generally. We give it to the industry partner. Companies come to us for solutions, but they don't always know what to do and how to get the best benefit for the IP. Colleges could help them understand what they have and help them commercialize it. Right now, though, colleges and their offices of research are underfunded and do not have the bandwidth or resources to take their industry partners on this complex journey.

In conclusion, I'm happy that colleges are included in this study. I hope that I have demonstrated the important role that they can play in Canada's research ecosystem, especially as it touches industry relevance, economic development and job creation. We can do so much more if we can be recognized as such and enabled to realize our full potential for Canada's economy of the future.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's terrific. Thank you. It's great to hear SONAMI getting a couple of shout-outs. Kithio Mwanzia is the network manager there. He replaced me as president of the chamber of commerce in Guelph when I was elected. We're all connected in some way or another.

We will now go to our next witness, Pippa Seccombe-Hett, from Aurora College.

You have five minutes.

[Pippa Seccombe-Hett, Vice-President, Research, Aurora College]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak with the committee today.

I would like to acknowledge that I am here speaking on behalf of the president of Aurora College, Dr. Glenda Vardy Dell. She was unable to make it today and asked me to speak on her behalf since we recognize that it is critical that the voices of smaller and remote post-secondary institutions participate in discussions surrounding the distribution of research funding.

I want to share some information about our college to provide context for our institution and our position with regard to the distribution of funds.

Aurora College is the public community college of the Northwest Territories. It has three main campuses—in Inuvik, Fort Smith and Yellowknife—with research staff located in each of these campuses. We operate the Western Arctic Research Centre in Inuvik, which is the logistics hub for research in Canada's western Arctic. It serves the college, the community and hundreds of external researchers every year from regional, national and international origins.

The north has always generated a tremendous amount of research interest. However, the science and research have historically been led by researchers located outside of the region. These researchers are located primarily in federal government departments and in universities across southern Canada. Increasingly, we have to note, we are seeing large international teams working in our area as well. All of this research has made a tremendous contribution to science. It is valuable nationally, regionally and internationally, but there has always been a gap between the big-picture science and regional research concerns and priorities.

When I first began working in the territories 25 years ago, we spent much time advocating for the priorities of northern jurisdictions and highlighting them to federal research funders to encourage work on these topics since the funds were inaccessible to residents in the territories. This prevented the region from maintaining research capacity in the north, conducting research on local priorities or directing the use of any research funds, which created a great sense of inequity.

Aurora College started conducting a small amount of research in 1995, when the college was created and merged with the Science Institute of the Northwest Territories in advance of the separation and creation of Nunavut. This positioned a small amount of capacity in Aurora College to focus on regional applied research programs, and that's since grown.

Aurora College became eligible to access tri-agency funding in 2014 and, over the last decade, has really started to grow and realize the aspirations of developing applied, community-partnered research. Over this decade, we have grown from 10 to 45 research staff and developed applied research programs with community partners, always partnering with and creating strong benefits for northern communities. It is also important to highlight that we have been able to anchor access to indirect cost funding for our regional indigenous governments and not-for-profit organizations in order to contribute to creating a regional applied research ecosystem.

Throughout this last decade, we have also increased our collaborative engagements with research from universities that have active northern research programs. Doing this has allowed us access to new funds, mentorships and partnerships, but it has also helped us understand how much more indirect cost funding is provided to universities through the research support fund.

Aurora College is currently in the process of transforming from a college to a polytechnic university. Part of this vision is really about building and expanding on this applied research focus. Getting access to national research funds has been a game-changer for us. It has positioned the college to be in a meaningful role for the region and opened avenues for funds, equipment and expertise to focus on and partner with northern and community organizations to address local challenges. The NSERC college and community innovation program has been critical to our growth and success in developing research programs that bring impact and benefit to the communities we serve.

Given our position and our recent experiences with national research funding, we would like to highlight and recommend continued and increased funding in the college and community innovation program. This anchors the applied, community-partnered research where we have demonstrated success and impact and are positioned to grow.

We would also highlight access to research support funds to help offset indirect costs. Providing colleges and institutes with equal access to these would create significant capacity in our institutions to meet the evolving research requirements of data security, research data management, etc.—the many changing requirements.

We also suggest potentially targeting funds that build bridges between universities and colleges to increase the impact of research and knowledge at the community level.

Of course, being northerners, we want to highlight that there is a northern supplement for university programs that is not available for the northern colleges or polytechnics. This creates an additional barrier for our ability to conduct research.

I would like to close by reiterating the importance of national research funding for supporting applied northern research within colleges. It's critical that opportunities remain for remote, northern and indigenous people to access national research funds and participate in the applied northern research ecosystem.

I'd like to say thank you for allowing me to speak with you today. I welcome all questions to help provide the small institution perspective in support of the work of this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's great. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Now we'll go to our first six-minute questioner, Corey Tochor from the Conservatives.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you so much.

Thank you to our witnesses.

I'm going to start with the south—Niagara.

Are small colleges receiving sufficient funds to support the federal government in managing compliance with the new federal policies on sensitive research partnerships with entities such as the PRC or international actors? Do you have the funds available to be compliant?

[Dr. Marc Nantel]

No.

I'll go back to my colleague Pippa at Aurora. One thing that colleges are missing is resources to do the stuff that research needs to get done on top of research: project management, data gathering, research data management and data security. We have the international security aspects to look after—lots of reporting—and that is not generally supported very strongly in the college grants. Universities have—

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Do you know of anyone from your organization who has turned down new research projects because they are associated with the PRC or foreign actors on that list?

[Dr. Marc Nantel]

No.

Listen, I don't want to speak for every college in Canada, but most of our research is with local small and medium-sized enterprises, and very few of them are multinationals with ties in several countries, including those that are of concern.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I'd just like a little clarification. We're talking about the different percentages. On average, 48% of the funding received for supported university research comes from the federal government. How much of the federal funding does your college receive for research as a percentage?

[Dr. Marc Nantel]

I'd say the majority of the cash funding we get is from the federal government. Some colleges lean more provincially, but to be fair, there's not generally much—in the province of Ontario, anyway—towards research funding for colleges. The program named by Pippa, the NSERC CCI program, is a big source.

We are also blessed to be funded by a regional development agency, FedDev Ontario, which is federal but regionally federal, if you want. I'd say it's 90% of what we do, but it's still a small number and that's part of the problem.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Absolutely.

Now, switching to the north, to Aurora, thank you so much for Zooming in today.

I'll ask you the same question. Do you have the funds required to protect the research and our country and implement the policies that have been rolled out by the federal government?

[Pippa Seccombe-Hett]

Honestly, it's a stretch. We don't receive very much funding to support that work, and it's off the sides of people's desks that we manage to do it. Because we have to, we just find ways to pull together as needed within our institution to do it, but do we have the base funding to meet it easily? No.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

On the research you're doing, especially the research that is done specifically on the lives of the people in the north, have you had any international groups or companies that want to do research in the north that you had questions about?

[Pippa Seccombe-Hett]

There are lots of people from many countries that conduct research in our region. As to “questions”, I'm not sure what you mean. We do have a regional licensing process that manages and forces adherence on basic research requirements that would be expected within Canadian research—

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Have you turned down any funds from foreign actors because of this policy?

[Pippa Seccombe-Hett]

No.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Okay.

Just because we have you for the second round of questions—I have some additional ones once I'm done with these—can you tell us a bit more about Aurora's life in the north? How do you guys heat your buildings up there? What sort of energy source is there?

[Pippa Seccombe-Hett]

It depends on the community. It's natural gas in some communities, and in others it's oil. There is some hydro, but largely it's gas and oil.