Evidence of meeting #61 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Professor and Canada Research Chair, Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario
That would be a very good model. It could go with NSERC or CIHR, but the key is that the money has to go with it. You can't ask those agencies to use the money they have to run this program. This is what we keep doing in this country and this does not work.
Professor, Department of Medicine and Department of Chemistry, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
It would be nice if IRAP were peer reviewed.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Thank you so much.
Now we'll go to Ms. Young. Welcome to our committee, Ms. Young, we're glad to have you here. It's your turn.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
Thank you to this fascinating panel this morning. It has certainly been interesting to hear from you experts about the range of the different challenges and opportunities that are available here.
I am new to this committee; I'm simply covering for somebody today. I wanted to ask a couple of questions because in other committees that I'm on there seems to be a thread. We're having the same kinds of discussions.
A number of you have mentioned that we lack a critical mass in Canada, that we need investment dollars in Canada, that we need to be more innovative in terms of how we align our research with the development of business and the application of that. Would you say that's true?
That's a difficult question to answer. Let me rephrase it.
We're hearing this from different sectors. The natural resource sector, for example, is an obvious one. It's interesting to me to come to the health committee and hear there are similar issues, big issues, because of where Canada is in terms of population and funding, etc.
Perhaps each of you could take a minute to talk about this. You've come up with many suggestions this morning in terms of what Canada can do to make things better. On IRAP, you talked about the change in structure of how the money is focused and spent, the interdisciplinary models, the total per capita money. That's good. It was heartwarming to me, as a member of the government, that you're not asking for money, but you want money to be differently focused and differently spent.
If you had a magic wand and you could do one thing, what would it be? I'm going to ask each of you to respond. What is that one thing you would do in terms of transforming the money we currently give? You've already said that, per capita, it's a fair amount of money, but how would you transform it to be more effective?
Professor and Canada Research Chair, Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario
Don, do you want to go first?
Professor, Department of Medicine and Department of Chemistry, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
Oh, great. Thanks.
To me, the most important thing would be to break down the barriers between disciplines and encourage a multidisciplinary approach. I think that is crucial to product development. I don't know how to do that, but if I could wave my magic wand that you have bestowed upon me and have this occur, I would put multidisciplinary encouragement first.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Dr. Cutler, you haven't had a chance to intercede today. Dr. Hormes has left, but we'd love to hear what you have to say. Perhaps you would like to give that answer to Ms. Young.
Dr. Jeffrey Cutler Director, Industrial Science, Canadian Light Source
Thank you very much.
I have to agree with our colleagues here, but it's also finding those ways to get Canada to better leverage the investments in infrastructure. How does an organization, such as Canadian Light Source where I come from, find better ways to leverage the capacities at the University of Western Ontario with their MRI program, or at Dalhousie University?
There's building collaborations within your own institution, but it's finding ways to build those collaborations bigger than that. How does Canada make better use of the investments made across this country? That's one of the grand challenges, getting that key interaction at the grassroots level across the nation.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
I'm going to interject for a second. What you're saying is it's not enough to only look within your own university, but also to look at leveraging Canada's expertise, equipment and everything across this country.
Conservative
Wai Young Conservative Vancouver South, BC
Dr. Menon, please, your magic wand, which you're waving already.
Professor and Canada Research Chair, Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario
I feel very passionate about this. I think I have a real answer here.
The first is a question. What is the difference between Canada, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq? Only one of these countries does not have a science minister, and that is Canada.
From the big picture perspective, one of the reasons we cannot integrate all our programs is that this country does not have a science minister. Pieces of R and D live in Industry Canada, in CIHR, in all these different agencies, but there is no one person looking at the big picture.
In the United States, our neighbour, the cabinet usually has somebody in science, and it's usually a Nobel laureate. We don't have that.
Conservative
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
I just wanted to correct Dr. Menon. I believe you might know Dr. Goodyear, who is our Minister of State for Science and Technology. As a government, we did put that ministry forward.
My colleague across the way talked about low-cost initiatives. Our government has been working to lower corporate tax rates and to streamline regulations so that the business environment is better in Canada. Dr. Menon said that unfortunately we don't have some of these world corporations. He mentioned Siemens and some other companies that unfortunately we don't have, but that's a reality. If we want to partner with industry, the question I think is how we encourage that. I think Dr. Weaver mentioned that in other countries at the university level they allow their researchers to work in industry part-time. They go back and forth, and they get that leading-edge experience.
I was just wondering, because I'm looking for practical suggestions for the government, Dr. Weaver, do you have an idea for how the federal government might be able to encourage that type of interaction?
Director, Industrial Science, Canadian Light Source
I have one very quick comment around that, where you're trying to find ways to leverage this and bring people together. There's a very interesting model in Quebec in the aerospace sector called CRIAQ. It is the Quebec aerospace consortium. They do innovation forums where they bring industry in with academia. It's an opportunity for industry to ask what our problems are, what our grand challenges are, so that academia knows. Quite often we don't know what some of the challenges or issues are that industry needs to deal with.
Finding those opportunities to bring industry and academia into the same space is unbelievably valuable.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
I agree with you very much. One of my colleagues talked about practical research versus theoretical research.
One of the things I've been involved with, coming from Oshawa, is the automotive sector. What that industry seems to do is that it will address a problem by talking to academia and seeing if it can come up with a solution, and because it does that, we've heard about problems with funding, innovation, and venture capital. If science is actually gearing toward solving a specific problem that industry has today, I think that's a good way to stimulate more research and more innovation and, at the end of the day, commercialize and actually end up with a product.
We heard from one witness. Ravi mentioned he thinks it should be 80% one way but only 20% practical research. What do you think, Dr. Cutler? Is that a good percentage that the federal government should be looking at?
Director, Industrial Science, Canadian Light Source
I would agree it's probably in that same order of magnitude, the 70:30 or 80:20 perspective. If you look at most major developments that are out in the private sector, they've been developed under a kind of fundamental research. You do need to leverage that in, but that input from the private sector is still needed to give us some sense. If you go back to the CRIAQ model, a lot of it is pre-competitive R and D, where multiple industries come together and say, “Here's a problem we all have; help us fix it.” They bring the right partners in, and then they find the various funding models to deal with that.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
The Government of Canada funds you at Canadian Light Source. What proportion of your funding comes from the Government of Canada?
Director, Industrial Science, Canadian Light Source
We have about seven different funding partners that give us operating funding right now. It's probably in the order of about 80% from the federal sources and then from the Province of Saskatchewan, the University of Saskatchewan, and some industry revenue as well. It comes from a number of places. We get funding from NSERC, CIHR, and NRC as kind of the main funding, and we're part of the CFI MSI program as well.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
How does that funding enable your facility to operate and attract, let's say, other investors who need problems solved?
Director, Industrial Science, Canadian Light Source
It allows us, number one, to keep the lights on, to keep the facility operating. We have about 200 staff. Probably 70 of them are at the masters or Ph.D. level, so we have a large cross-section of scientists who work in myriad different sectors, including life sciences and health sciences, environmental sciences, and material sciences trying to find those ways to help them push back the frontiers.
Ms. Block talked about how many drugs are being developed at CLS. There are companies doing all sorts of work on drug design, from not just various places in Canada but the U.S. as well. There's work done on advanced medical imaging to find better ways to look at cancer development. There are a lot of different applications in the health sciences sector that are having access to the investments the Government of Canada has made, and things like CLS are unbelievably valuable in helping push back some of those frontiers.
Finding those better ways to partner with the other infrastructure in Canada is one thing we're wrestling with all the time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Thank you, Dr. Cutler. I appreciate your input here.
We have one last questioner. Mr. Eyking.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
Thanks, Chair. It's great to be on this committee. I see Ms. Young is visiting this committee. I think it's good that we visit each other's committees sometimes to find out what's going on as MPs.
Recently a group of us, an all parliamentary group, went to a place called Eindhoven, the Netherlands. This was Philips Electronics' main city, but they've changed the whole city around to an innovation centre. It was amazing to see all the creativity. All these companies send their people there to do research and study. They would socialize. They even encouraged trading secrets, trading patents. They were coming out with almost a patent a day. One would say maybe one a month would really make it happen. It was great to see that synergy. Synergy leads to economic activity. We see it in RIM in Waterloo and maybe in Silicon Valley in California.
Our health system is kind of a hybrid of the American and European systems. Today everybody is talking about how we can have more innovation and technology to help us. Looking at that model, are we missing something here in North America because of the size of our economy? Do we have to let the Americans take the lead on this, or is there an opening for Canada to create this synergy? The Netherlands only has 10 million people and they're creating this synergy just by partnering with private companies and public money. Is there room for us to create that synergy and innovation and economic activity in the health care system? It's going to be key for North America's ageing population in the next 50 years.