Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, for the invitation.
The Council of Canadian Academies and our member academies—the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences—are part of Canada's science advice community. For our part, the CCA has been helping governments understand scientifically complex issues and their policy implications for more than 10 years. We provide highly credible and authoritative answers to questions asked by the federal government and other groups. We bring together the best minds from Canada and around the world, using expert panels to evaluate what is known and what is not known. These panels are multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral and can be convened on virtually any topic.
You have a copy of my testimony already, so I'll just remind you of a couple of brief points.
First, over the past decade it has been noted that science advice has been underutilized in government decision-making in Canada. We fully support the renewed commitment by the Government of Canada to put evidence squarely at the centre of decision-making and we welcome, for example, the decision to establish a chief science officer. Continued support for this type of leadership and for similar opportunities can only serve to enhance the entire science advice community, improving the integration of evidence into decision-making and strengthening public policy.
The government's policy priorities cross-cut multiple departments. Arguably, every one of them would benefit from evidence, evidence about the science, evidence about best practices, and lessons from other countries. Indeed, you've already heard from witnesses this week, and about two minutes ago, from my colleague about a number of complex issues of central importance to Canada's future: innovation, mental health, green infrastructure. We believe, Mr. Chair, that additional investment in science advice would aid in developing policy on each one of these issues and many others.
Second, as to our place in this system, the Government of Canada established the CCA in 2005 with a commitment of $30 million over 10 years. This commitment was renewed in 2015 for a further five years at the same funding level. With this modest investment, however, the CCA has completed 29 separate assessments for federal agencies on a diverse range of topics of importance to Canadians, from STEM employment to policing. We've also leveraged outside funding to undertake studies on issues such as climate change technology and marine shipping.
As we mentioned in our submitted testimony, our studies have influenced the development of a number of policies and programs by the government and others. With innovation very much on everyone's mind, we believe that innovation in science advice is every bit as important as innovation in other aspects of our economy. A good example is the way we incorporated traditional knowledge into a report on aboriginal food security in the north.
We also recognize that using evidence to inform policy must, after all, fit into the larger political reality. Some policy questions should be responded to quickly because they are motivated by the urgency of current events. The topic of the Zika virus comes to mind. Others benefit from deeper assessments that require longer-term consideration. Both of these are needed, and we do both of them at the CCA.
That said, three factors limit our ability to be as responsive as we would like to be and as we believe the government should expect of us.
First, requests for our work are submitted through a lengthy review and approval process, which affects our ability to take up studies quickly.
Second, while we are taking steps now to be more innovative in our own work, for example, by developing a more robust suite of services, our current funding envelope may constrain such robust plans.
Finally, we are now entering the second year of the current five-year funding plan, which inhibits our capacity to plan and to undertake future work, something that anyone working in science or in policy can appreciate.
Taken together, these factors may disincline potential sponsors from submitting requests at the very moment they are most needed. The government would, we think, signal its strong commitment to using science in policy-making by making further investment in the CCA to enable more studies, from more sponsors, on more topics, using more innovative approaches.
I should close with a quote from the mandate letter to the Minister of Science, with which I'm sure you're all familiar and with which we wholeheartedly agree: “We are a government that believes in science—and a government that believes that good scientific knowledge should inform decision-making.”
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.