Science and Research Committee on April 18th, 2024

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Ms. McMartin, my question will be brief.

This government stands for values of equity, diversity and inclusion. Would you say that these values currently exist in the structure of research funding in Canada at the organizational level?

[Dr. Dena McMartin]

At the organizational level, I think we're still struggling to meet those goals, but yes, I do believe we are all committed and making great strides toward better inclusion, diversity and belonging.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Great. Thank you for fitting that in.

We'll now go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I'd just like to follow up on the question from Mr. Blanchette-Joncas about CFREF.

Dr. Aiken, you mentioned projects in Dalhousie funded through this mechanism, and we've heard some of the concerns from the University of Lethbridge around this. You also mentioned capacity issues around applications for large grants and some that you couldn't possibly do. I'm just wondering if you could comment further, from your perspective, on what would make this better. If you had a group of universities that received such a grant, would it be better to spread out those administrative costs and benefits from that grant to all of the universities instead of just the lead one?

[Dr. Alice Aiken]

Indeed, that's what we've done.

The reason we were successful in the CFREF application is that we didn't lead it alone. It truly was a partnership with Dalhousie, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Université Laval and Memorial University. It was a genuine partnership.

The administrative costs are split among the universities as proportional to the grant. As the lead university, we really just see it as a partnership. We happened to have had the infrastructure here to be the lead university, but it could have been any one of the four of us because we worked together as a team to build the grant.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

In the budget yesterday, a new advisory council on science and industry was announced.

I'm just wondering if both, you, Dr. Aiken, and Dr. McMartin, could comment on what you think such a council should be looking to do and how that council should be formulated. Who should be sitting on that council?

[Dr. Alice Aiken]

In my reading of the budget, it was envisioned that academia, industry and not-for-profits would be there. This reminds me of the old STIC committee that used to be in existence to set strategic priorities.

The STIC, by my recollection, didn't have a capacity to communicate its findings to government, or, indeed, to the public. I think what would be really important, if you're going to have that makeup of people really looking across all sectors to determine Canadian research priorities, is that they're able to communicate back to those sectors and to make recommendations to government that are based on good data and thoughtful process.

I think the STIC had some advantages, but it wasn't really able to communicate. I would think that would be a big thing for that.

[Dr. Dena McMartin]

Just to add to that, I think that being able to have the sector representation, perhaps not single industry but sector-wide, would be helpful. By the same token, around the not-for-profits, it's really important not only that there's regional representation but also a diversity of voices at the table from a variety of sectors—some of which are often not invited to those tables—able to communicate there and then have a voice back into community.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Dr. McMartin, maybe I'll give you more time to flesh out this issue of the lack of capacity. You mentioned being able to access more funds to have that capacity to hire people, to spend the time and to apply for these big grants.

[Dr. Dena McMartin]

Sure, and if you don't mind, I'll use an example around health care and graduate funding. Again, very much like Dr. Aiken mentioned, we're very pleased with the announcement around increased graduate funding in the federal budget.

One area we've been looking at, along with many other regional institutions and with the U15, is building out our rural physician development programming so that we're training people where they will work and live, really living that “live where you learn” model. Those relationships and partnerships are essential. They're very important. The research is taking place in the region, where we can see opportunities to create new ways of looking at, let's say, aging in place in smaller centres, and where we can see the direct impacts of working with indigenous health challenges, the social determinants of health and issues around mental health and addictions, which you sometimes see being done at the larger institutions. However, being at the community face really makes a difference around being able to do that evidence-based research with community. I think we can do it a little bit faster, sometimes, because we do have very strong community relationships and trusted partnerships.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

We go now to Mr. Tochor for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you so much to the chair and to our witnesses for being here today.

I have a series of questions for both universities. Regarding the research your respective universities carry out, do you track how much of it has been commercialized?

[Dr. Dena McMartin]

Yes, we do.

[Dr. Alice Aiken]

Yes, we do.

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

How has that been tracking, as in, has it been trending up, or is it flat or down?

[Dr. Alice Aiken]

Ours has been trending up, for sure, in terms of the number of patents and start-ups that we've grown and supported...IP.

[Dr. Dena McMartin]

Similarly, here we're seeing a significant growth in commercialization start-ups, subsidiaries and, in particular, a lot of graduate student enterprise being grown out of the university. We provide an incubator space for them on campus—with the support of external agencies and partners—give them a couple of years of support and then slowly move them into a more market-appropriate cost structure.

[Dr. Alice Aiken]

Yes, we do the same.

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

On the commercialization aspect of it, I'm assuming this is another revenue source. In general, have you been moving away and diversifying yourself away from government for some of the funding that's taking place on your campuses?

[Dr. Alice Aiken]

Currently, on the first stage of “lab to market”, we're one of the partnered national leads, with Toronto Metropolitan and Concordia, though we have lots of good partners across the country—33 to be exact. We have found that some other sources of funding have helped our graduate students to commercialize, but we've also found that the business community is very generous with its time in helping our graduate students learn about business development and growth of a business. We also are one of the hubs of the Creative Destruction Lab, so we move right through all areas of commercialization.

However, I will also note that we have a wholly inventor-owned IP policy. We don't retain any of the IP our people generate.

[Dr. Dena McMartin]

The University of Lethbridge is the same; we don't retain the IP.

Our goal is to ensure that we've actually reduced the barriers to get information, technologies, new ideas and innovations out into the entrepreneurial landscape, rather than attempting to keep them inside the ivory tower. That means we're not replacing different revenue streams. In fact, we're encouraging revenue generation in our community rather than within our institution.

[Dr. Alice Aiken]

Exactly.

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

Speaking about the communities and life on campus, can you discuss the impact of the out-of-control cost-of-living crisis that is happening on your students and the research in your respective universities?

[Dr. Dena McMartin]

I can go first. Alice has been good about going first on several other occasions.

Given the affordability crisis, I would say there's actually an opportunity to really support the regional and smaller institutions. We don't have the same housing availability issues or affordability challenges you might find in some of the larger centres—at least not yet.

It is expensive to live. Inflation is high. It's been trending down for the last little while, which has been extraordinarily helpful.

In any of those questions there is a confluence of issues. There's not one single challenge that goes into affordability. It's access to adequate federal, provincial and municipal funding. It's ensuring that students do have access to the bursaries, the scholarships and the food security they need.

I think food security on campuses right now is a particularly challenging issue for all of us to keep top of mind.

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

We'll switch out to Dalhousie in a second, but just on food insecurity, have you heard of students having to use the food bank?